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COF/RIGRT DEPOSIT. 



American <at£en of %ettet$ 

WILLIAM HICKLING PEESCOTT 





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American apen of Hetterg 



WILLIAM HICKLING 
PRESCOTT 



BY 



ROLLO OGDEN 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

(ftfce ftitoer#&e $re#, Cambridge 

1904 



LIBRARY «f CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

MAR 28 1904 

Copyright Entry 
Y\ Lcoc . %. lo - l C[ g <f 
CLASS ^ XXc No. 

COPY S 



75*^7 

.or 



COPYRIGHT I904 BY ROLLO OGDEN 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published April IQ04 



To S. M. O. 
" Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.' 



PREFACE 

This volume makes no pretense of supplanting 
Ticknor's " Life of Prescott." It aims simply 
to supplement it. Ticknor wrote the biogra- 
phy of his lifelong friend, possessed of ample 
materials ; but he was already an old man ; 
his view of society and literature, always se- 
vere, had deepened into something like auster- 
ity ; and to bring out vividly the playful and 
engagingly human aspects of Prescott's charac- 
ter would doubtless have seemed to him like 
taking liberties with the Muse of History. To 
complete and correct the picture of Prescott's 
personality, while giving a condensed but con- 
nected account of his life and work, has been 
the sole task undertaken by the present writer. 
Use has been made of significant matter re- 
jected by Ticknor, or unknown to him, though 
his work has also been drawn upon occasion- 



viii PREFACE 

ally. The author could have had no hope of 
success but for the kindness with which the 
Prescott papers were put at his disposal by- 
Mrs. Eoger Wolcott and Linzee Prescott, 
Esq., the historian's grandchildren. To them 
his warmest acknowledgments are due. 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. The Crossed Swords 1 

II. School and College 16 

ILL " Le Travail d' Aveugle " . . . .23 
IV. The Inward Eye . . * . . . 38 

V. Preparation 48 

VI. Beginnings ....... 59 

VII. The Quest of a Theme . . . .73 

VIII. Ferdinand and Isabella .... 84 

IX. Awaking Famous 99 

X. The Man of Letters . . . . 114 

XL The Conquest of Mexico .... 130 

XII. The Conquest of Peru .... 152 

XIII. The English Visit 160 

XIV. Personal Traits 172 

XV. Political Sympathies 197 

XVI. Philip II 208 

XVII. The Unfinished Window . . . .229 
Index 235 



WILLIAM HICKLING 
PKESCOTT 



CHAPTER I 

THE CROSSED SWORDS 

Thackeray brought the Prescott pedigree 
into the high relief of a work of imagina- 
tion. His allusion in " The Virginians " to 
the " crossed swords on the library wall of one 
of the most famous writers of America " pleased 
the historian. Mrs. Ritchie has printed his 
note of acknowledgment : " It was very pret- 
tily done, and I take it very kind of you." 
This was in 1857. When Prescott was in Eng- 
land in 1850, it appears from his letters home 
that he, like many another man, had been " not 
much impressed by Thackeray" in general 
society. But in this country they were drawn to 
each other. Even had they not been, Prescott 



2 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

could not have failed to be touched by the 
" compliment to my two swords of Bunker's 
Hill memory, and their unworthy proprietor," 
since he always felt, as he wrote to Griswold in 
1845, that he had a " right to take an honest 
pride, or at least satisfaction, in my descent." 
The official genealogist of the family is Wil- 
liam Prescott, of Concord, N. H., who pub- 
lished the "Prescott Memorial" in 1870. 
There were " two separate and distinct emi- 
grants by the name of Prescott." John Pres- 
cott reached Boston and Watertown in 1640, 
and James Prescott was "first heard of at 
Hampton, N. H., in 1665." Both these Pres- 
cotts are traced back to " James Prescott of 
Standish, in Lancashire, England, who was re- 
quired by an order of Queen Elizabeth, dated 
August, 1564, to keep in readiness horse- 
men and armor." It must be said, however, 
that this English connection is not made out 
by evidence satisfactory to the severe methods 
of later genealogists. Reviewing the " Prescott 
Memorial" in the "American Genealogist," 
the late Mr. W. H. Whitmore wrote : " Our 
objection is to the English part of the pedi- 



THE CROSSED SWORDS 3 

gree. . . . Not a single proof is given." In- 
deed, the "Memorial" abounds in simplici- 
ties like the following : " Although we are not 
able to trace the direct lineage of the Pres- 
cotts that came to America farther back than 
the time of Queen Elizabeth, yet it is well 
known that Prescott was known as an ancient 
family in the town of Prescott in the county 
of Lancaster." Nobility in the ancestry is 
even hinted at, and a coat of arms is given. 
But on all this, two youthful letters of the 
historian's throw a somewhat amusing light. 
Writing to his parents from St. Michael's, 
March 15, 1816, he said: — 

" I intend to have the family arms engraven 
in London. I wish you would send me a fac- 
simile of them, which may be easily obtained 
from Dr. P., for I am acquainted only with 
the crest ; and as people of the same name of- 
ten have the same crest, but different bearings, 
I might confound my genealogical tree with 
some other, which would be a great pity, as I 
should wish to ascertain 

' if our blood, 
Has crept through scoundrels, ever since the flood,' 



4 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

or if it has not flowed through some more illus- 
trious channels. There is something extremely 
ominous in the crest, which you know is the 
bird of night." 

On June 7 of the same year, however, Pres- 
cott wrote from London : — 

" I have been to the Herald's Office, and, to 
my utter consternation, they tell me there is no 
such crest as an owl in their books, although 
there is a Sir John or Sir Alex, or some other 
baroneted Prescott now extant in London. I 
begin to be seriously afraid we have not the 
least blood royal in us." 

Though thus left hanging, the English deri- 
vation is undoubted. It was tacitly assumed 
by Captain Henry Prescott, R. N., Governor 
of Newfoundland, who on February 25, 1840, 
wrote to Prescott to say that he congratulated 
himself upon seeing his family name raised to 
literary distinction by the historian, and sur- 
mised that he might trace his own ancestry to 
a common stock with Prescott's " in no very 
distant past." 

Even once safely in New England, a mythic 
element seems to attach to the Prescott an- 



THE CROSSED SWORDS 5 

nals. Wondrous tales are told of tlie emigrant 
John. Established on the frontier in Lancas- 
ter, he fought the Indians in a full coat of 
mail-armor, — helmet, cuirass, and gorget, — 
and " struck terror to the savage foe by an ap- 
pearance more frightful than their own." Pi- 
quant tradition of his extraordinary personal 
prowess has been handed down in the Prescott 
family. He was one of those " soldier ances- 
tors " to whom Governor Roger Wolcott re- 
ferred in his privately printed " Brief Sketch " 
of Prescott, as helping to determine the histo- 
rian's character and possibly his themes. Cer- 
tainly it is no abrupt transition from the ad- 
venturous Cromwellian Indian fighter, John 
Prescott of Lancaster, to Hernan Cortes and 
his Aztec antagonists. 

The line of descent is through Jonas Pres- 
cott, son of the first emigrant, 1648-1723. 
He lived in Groton. Prom him sprang Ben- 
jamin, who rose to be colonel of militia for his 
county, as also for the adjoining county of 
Worcester, and who, as a member of the Gen- 
eral Court of the Colony, appeared before a 
royal commission in behalf of the territorial 



6 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

rights of Massachusetts as against New Hamp- 
shire in 1737. He died the next year at the age 
of forty-one, — prematurely, for a long-lived 
stock. Second of his sons, and grandfather of the 
historian, was that William Prescott — Pres- 
cott the Brave, Washington called him — whose 
name blazed up in glory at Bunker Hill. Born 
in 1726, he pushed out before he was of age 
into what was then the wilds of upper Middle- 
sex, and acquired lands in the township of 
Pepperell, as it came later to be named, after 
the captor of Louisburg. Hence the estate so 
loved of the historian, still held in the family 
under the original Indian title. Colonel Prescott 
lived, like too many soldiers, in a more lavish 
style than his means admitted, so that his only 
child William, born August 19, 1762, had 
early to set about making his own way in the 
world. After three years at Dummer Acad- 
emy he entered Harvard, where he gradu- 
ated in 1783, and then supported himself by 
teaching at Beverly while studying law under 
Nathan Dane, who afterwards founded the law 
professorship at Cambridge. Admitted to the 
bar in 1787, he practiced his profession for 



THE CROSSED SWORDS 7 

two years in Beverly, but removed to Salem 
in 1789, where he lived till 1808. In that 
year he made his home in Boston. Industri- 
ous and able, he rose steadily until it could be 
said of him, as Webster did at the time of his 
death, that " at the moment of his retirement 
from the bar of Massachusetts he stood at its 
head for legal learning and attainments." 

Political honors were his for the taking, but 
nearly all of them he put aside. He sat in 
the Legislature as representative of Salem, 
and also as senator from the county of Essex ; 
was a delegate to the famous Hartford Con- 
vention in 1814, and a useful member of the 
Constitutional Convention of Massachusetts in 
1820-21 ; for a year (1818-19) served as 
Judge of the Common Pleas in Boston, though 
twice he refused an offered appointment to the 
bench of the Supreme Court of the State. 
Highly successful as a lawyer, he early paid 
off his father's debts and cleared the family 
property from all encumbrances, supporting his 
widowed mother (Abigail Hale) at Pepperell 
until her death at a great age in 1821. The 
fortune which Judge Prescott accumulated was 



8 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

freely put at his son's disposal, and without 
it the historian's work would have been im- 
possible. Between the two there was always a 
peculiarly close intimacy. Shortly after his 
father died, December 8, 1844, Prescott wrote 
to a friend a long letter in which he gave a 
sketch of Judge Prescott' s life and a penetrat- 
ing while tender appreciation of his character. 
A part of this is worth quoting for its inherent 
interest, as well as for its significance in point 
of heredity. 

" The great characteristic of his moral na- 
ture was integrity. The least departure from 
truth was a thing he would have shrunk from, 
as tainting the soul. He had all the moral 
courage which is demanded for seeking out the 
right and steadily pursuing it. Yet he did not 
do this so as to make virtue unamiable. For 
he pursued his measures in a gentle concilia- 
tory way that sought to spare the feelings of 
others, and to make the most liberal allowances 
for the infirmities of human nature. He was, 
indeed, severe to no one but himself in his 
judgments. 

" His tastes were intellectual to a most ex- 



THE CROSSED SWORDS 9 

traordinary degree. Books were the friends 
that furnished him with an inexhaustible fund 
of contentment. After his retirement from 
business, — a business which had occupied as 
many hours of every day, probably, for more 
than forty years, as ever engaged any practi- 
tioner at our bar, — he found abundant re- 
sources in his own library. This is rare. He 
would pursue systematic courses of reading 
and study, taking copious notes on such great 
questions in politics or morals as most inter- 
ested him. And in these studies, that of theo- 
logy had a conspicuous place, — theology in its 
most extended sense. He was particularly fond 
of history, and regularly provided himself with 
all the best publications, historical and bio- 
graphical, from the English press, as well as 
our own. It was a sufficient relief to him to 
pass from the study of one subject to another. 
In lighter reading, as works of fiction, particu- 
larly in those directed to the analysis of char- 
acter, he took great delight. But especially 
when that pleasure could be shared with the 
domestic circle. How constant a companion 
for many years was the evening novel, — the 



10 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

novels of Scott, Miss Edgeworth, and the like, 
— if there are the like. 

" The great charm of his character consisted 
in his sympathy for all around him, — his fam- 
ily, his friends. Their joys and their sorrows 
were part of his. For the young he kept up 
this sympathy in his latest years, and especially 
for those who manifested anything excellent, 
or promising to become so, in their moral or 
mental character. As he had great sagacity, 
extensive learning, high principle, chivalrous 
honor, love of truth, reverence for the Deity 
most unaffected and remarkable, he had the 
qualities which command reverence without 
forfeiting love. There are some whom we ven- 
erate for high talents or principles, who have 
not the attractions that secure our affections. 
But none approached him — however inti- 
mately — without mingled feelings of rever- 
ence and love. How much and tenderly he 
was beloved can be known only to those who 
have seen him round his own hearth. If the 
world were made of such noble natures, what 
a world would it be ! " 

In Pierce's " Life of Sumner " there is re- 



THE CROSSED SWORDS 11 

cord of a conversation at dinner where were 
present, among others, Webster, Sumner, 
Ticknor, and Prescott. The subject of dis- 
cussion was the question what most powerfully 
shaped men's characters and activities. Some 
said one thing, some another. " Mr. Prescott 
declared that a mother's influence was the 
most potent, and paid an eloquent tribute to 
the female sex in this relation." It was, doubt- 
less, personal experience that spoke, for he had 
a remarkable mother. It was directly to her, 
Governor Wolcott thought, that he owed his 
" unfailing spirits." On the day she died, he 
spoke of her to Ticknor as an influence that 
had been " a guiding impulse " to him. Born 
Catherine Greene Hickling, she married the 
young lawyer of Salem, William Prescott, in 
1793. The union was unbroken for fifty-one 
years, and she survived her husband eight 
years, dying at eighty-four in 1852. Her life 
was uneventful, though for many years she 
took an active part in the public charities of 
Boston ; but, as her son wrote, it was her 
character that excited interest. Again we have 
the advantage of a picture of her beautiful 



\ 



12 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

nature by his own pen. A few days after her 
death, which as Ticknor says was mourned in 
Boston as a " public loss," Prescott gave to a 
friend an estimate of his mother. It reads, in 
part, as follows : — 

" My mother had a warm and sympathetic 
nature, a heart full of love, a hand open to 
charity. And her charity was not limited 
to the purse. It showed itself in a great in- 
dulgence to the frailties of others, as well as in 
sorrow for their distresses. She had, indeed, 
a generous nature, wishing ever to do good 
and to make those around her better. 

" Her predominant trait was disinterested- 
ness, as you well know, to an extent that, I 
think, you have rarely seen in any one. It was 
a perpetual spirit of self-sacrifice, yet so sweetly 
made that it seemed no sacrifice, but a plea- 
sure to herself. Her talk, her actions, and her 
thoughts, evidently, were all occupied with the 
good, or in some way the happiness of others. 
Her physical strength was great, and she used 
it indefatigably in works of benevolence and 
mercy, — visiting the sick, comforting the dy- 
ing, — and with all this possessing a fund of 



THE CROSSED SWORDS 13 

good sense and good humor which made her 
enter cordially into the innocent gayeties of 
life. Her Christianity was not of the morose 
kind, and though she wept with those that 
weep, she entered as warmly into the joys of 
her fellow creatures. 

" Though her reading in early life had been 
left much to her own direction, she had read 
a great deal more than was usual at her day ; 
and the Shakespeare which she had when a girl, 
still in the bookcase at Pepperell, bears testi- 
mony on every page to her accurate perusal. 
It is the same with others of the old English 
writers, and through life, and to the last day 
of it, the love of reading and writing has been 
a chief solace of her hours when alone. One 
book was her study by day and by night, — 
the Scriptures. This was visible to those ad- 
mitted to her privacy, for her piety was not 
of that ostentatious kind which commends 
itself to the notice of the world. 

" She had great energy ; and in the man- 
agement of affairs she was very efficient. She 
showed this particularly in the straitened cir- 
cumstances of early life. She was, however, 



14 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

exempt from the obstinacy and the conceit 
which sometimes attaches to that class of char- 
acters whose success in action leads them to 
an overestimate of their own abilities. She 
was as free from vanity as from envy. Indeed, 
such feelings could not harbor in a heart so 
disinterested. 

" She had the good fortune to be connected 
with a partner in life of a character admirably 
suited to her own, though little resembling it. 
They had some great points of resemblance, 
in their excellent understandings, soundness 
of principle, mild spirit of toleration, and gen- 
erous regard for the welfare of others. How 
could such a union be otherwise than happy. 
After being thus united for more than half a 
century, she was left to go on her pilgrimage 
alone. Yet not alone, for she was surrounded 
by troops of friends, the poor as well as the 
rich, whom her virtues and her deeds of kind- 
ness had made for her. She had children, too, 
who cherished her, and who strove, while they 
could, to 4 keep one parent from the sky.' — All 
this is past ; and the beautiful remembrance 
of her good deeds alone remains to us. She 



THE CROSSED SWORDS 15 

had errors, no doubt, — though I have not 
been long enough with her to find them out. 
If they are recorded above, sure I am they 
were not so numerous but that the recording 
angel will blot them out with a single tear ! " 

Seven children were born to Judge and 
Mrs. Prescott, but four of them died in in- 
fancy. Two sons and a daughter attained 
maturity. Of these the eldest was William 
Hickling Prescott, who was born at Salem, 
May 4, 1796. 



CHAPTER II 

SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 

" I am the only classmate of Mr. Prescott now 
present," said President Walker of Harvard, 
at the memorial meeting in honor of Prescott 
held by the Massachusetts Historical Society 
on February 1, 1859. "My recollections of 
him go back to our college days, when he 
stood among us one of the most joyous and 
light-hearted, in classic learning one of the 
most accomplished, without any enemies, with 
nothing but friends." This characterization 
is borne out by all the contemporary testi- 
mony now accessible. Ticknor got various 
accounts from intimates of the Prescott home 
in Salem, and all agree that the boy William 
had all of his mother's bright vivacity and 
his father's amiability. He was first taught at 
his mother's knee. Next we find him under, 
not a schoolmistress, but a school-mother, as 
she preferred to call herself, — that New Eng- 



SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 17 

land gentlewoman, Miss Mehitable Higginson, 
whose school for the very young was patron- 
ized by the best families of Salem. At seven 
he was placed in " Master Knapp's " school, 
where he remained till his father's removal to 
Boston in 1808. All the traditions of his boy- 
hood, which Ticknor piously gathered, make 
him out a merry lad, fonder of play than study, 
though with an inquisitive mind and ready 
memory which made it easy for him to learn. 
Prescott himself said that he could recall no 
period of his childhood when he did not love 
books ; his reading being mainly of stories and 
romances which used to quicken his imagina- 
tion so powerfully that he would cling to his 
mother and follow her about the house rather 
than be left alone with the creatures of his 
fancy. A sermon of Dr. Channing's to chil- 
dren spared the rod. " Mother, if I am ever 
a bad boy again, won't you set me to reading 
that sermon ? " 

In Boston, Prescott was in the half-school, 
half -home, of the Rev. Dr. Gardiner, rector of 
Trinity Church. In the library of that excel- 
lent scholar, a dozen boys got a thorough 



18 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

grounding in the classics. There, too, began 
the lifelong friendship between Ticknor and 
Prescott, as also that intimacy between the 
historian and a son of his teacher, which was 
remarkably close and never broken. Prescott 
was fitting for Harvard, and confined himself 
to the purely required studies. A boy to-day 
coaching for his finals could not more definitely 
regard that time wasted which was spent upon 
unnecessary text-books. Yet there is evidence 
of some outside reading. The Boston Athe- 
naeum was then in its beginnings, and, in that 
day of book famine in New England, furnished 
stores inaccessible otherwise. John Quincy 
Adams, off for Russia, deposited his library of 
several thousand volumes in the Athenaeum ; 
and it was particularly among them that Pres- 
cott, through the favor of one of the proprie- 
tors, spent many hours of aimless reading. 
From it he carried away little except, as he ac- 
knowledged forty years later, a firm conviction 
that there were such things as books, with 
some faint dawnings of literary taste. But 
there are no records of precocity — no vision 
splendid. The boy was but such as his fellows, 



SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 19 

— a trifle gayer by nature, perhaps, but mainly 
just the playful, prankish, " apple-eating ani- 
mal " that we expect the normal male of 
twelve or fourteen to be. He entered Sopho- 
more at Harvard in August, 1811. "It is 
certain," wrote Hillard in 1864, that Prescott 
"in later life did not look back upon his 
college career with unmingled satisfaction." 
There was nothing discreditable about it. It 
was simply not distinguished. The bright and 
sociable boy of sixteen did not at once be- 
come a mighty student. He himself, in those 
autobiographical notes which he sent to 
E. W. Griswoldin 1845, and which the latter 
printed with some amusing variations in the 
" Prose Writers of America," said that at 
Harvard he " gave little attention to the math- 
ematics and the sister sciences." However, " I 
employed my leisure in the study of my favor- 
ite authors. It was a matter of taste with me, 
but considering my subsequent occupations I 
have not found reason to regret it." On this 
college reading a ray of light is shed by the 
records of the Harvard Library. Prescott 
would appear to have drawn books only in his 



20 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

Junior year. A list of the volumes charged to 
" Prescott 2nd " — there was an Aaron Pres- 
cott in his class — between February 26 and 
August 14, 1813, extends to but nine entries. 
He may have had books elsewhere, but these 
were all from the library. They cover " Con- 
dillac, Tom. 8, CEuvres de Voltaire, Tom. 5, 
Rollin's Ancient History, vol. 1 & 2, Wollaston 
Eel. Nat. andMitford's Greece, vol. 1." In ad- 
dition, and most notable by way of unconscious 
prophecy, was Watson's " Philip II," of which 
all three volumes were taken out on June 4, 
while on July 9, vols. 1 and 2 of the same writ- 
er's Philip III were charged. Fourteen years 
later, when pursuing his elaborate historical 
studies, Prescott again «took up Watson, and, 
without a hint that he had ever turned the 
pages of that author before, set down in his 
private notes the critical opinion, " a meagre, 
unphilosophical chronicler of the richest period 
of Spanish history." This was sufficiently in 
accord with Richard Ford's judgment, who, in 
1842, urged Prescott to write the life of Philip 
II, saying that it was " an almost virgin sub- 
ject," since " the poor performance of Watson 



SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 21 

is beneath notice ; " and in 1855 wrote, " You 
have given us so much new and real history. 
Verily you are the most good-natured of men 
to praise that poor creature Watson whose 
nonsense you have extinguished." 

Prescott's rank in college may fairly be 
inferred from his having been elected a 
member of the Phi Beta Kappa — an honor 
much valued by him — and assigned to re- 
cite an original Latin poem, " Ad Spem," at 
Commencement. Bancroft's memory made it, 
in his address on Prescott before the New 
York Historical Society in 1859, " a Latin 
ode that he had written to Spring ; " at any 
rate, he accurately recalled first seeing Pres- 
cott in Cambridge at the latter' s graduation 
in 1814. Commencement was a high day in 
those years, and the old meeting-house was 
crowded with well-known people from Boston. 
After the literary exercises, the graduates en- 
tertained their friends. The Prescotts spread 
a dinner for five hundred in a tent. No 
plainer proof of family pride in the son could 
be given. When the son's son graduated a 
generation later, Prescott wrote in his journal : 



22 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

September 1, 1844. " Attended Commence- 
ment last Wednesday when Will took his 
degree. ... It is just 30 years since I 
quitted Alma Mater. ... It is worth remem- 
bering that Will occupied the same room in 
old Hollis which I occupied 30 years ago, 
and which his grandfather occupied about 
30 years before me ; three William Prescotts 
in three generations, and all alive to meet 
together in the same scene of boyish recollec- 
tions." This family room at Harvard has been 
identified for me as " Hollis 11." 



CHAPTEK III 

«LE TRAVAIL D'AVEUGLE" 

The " leading and controlling event " of Pres- 
cott's life was justly said by Hillard to be the 
accident which deprived him of sight in one 
eye, and which was soon followed by such an 
impairment of the vision of the other as to 
make his popular title, " the blind historian," 
no wide misnomer. 

It was a student prank that destroyed his 
left eye. Leaving the table at commons one 
day in his Junior year, Prescott turned sharply 
to see what particular piece of skylarking the 
noise behind him indicated, and was caught 
full in the open eye by a crust of bread thrown 
after him with none but rollicking intent. The 
blow was a fearful one in its nervous effects, 
striking Prescott down as by a rifle bullet. 
No external mark, then or later, was left on 
the eye, but it was made instantly and incura- 
bly sightless. The oculists of the day called it 



24 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

a paralysis of the retina. The patient soon 
recovered tone and spirits, and went back to 
enter into the kingdom of the learned with one 
eye, and did it gayly and triumphantly, as has 
been seen. Immediately after graduation, he 
began reading law in his father's office, and 
looked forward confidently to a career at the 
bar. But early in 1815 the shadow deepened 
upon him. He was seized with an obscure in- 
flammation in the right eye. Its diagnosis long 
baffled the physicians, who only later deter- 
mined it to be a case of acute rheumatism. For 
months he was entirely blind, and never again 
was he able to use the eye except with extreme 
caution, and for but short periods at a time. 
Intervals of complete blindness fell upon him 
with the frequent recurrence of his disease, — 
which often attacked him painfully in other 
parts of the body also, — and the fear of los- 
ing even the feeble and precarious sight re- 
maining to him never left him as long as he 
lived. 

The tradition of Prescott's total blindness 
was strengthened by the " Edinburgh Review." 
In its notice of the "Conquest of Mexico" it 



"LE TRAVAIL D'AVEUGLE" 25 

spoke of the writer as having " been blind sev- 
eral years." " The next thing," wrote Prescott 
in his journal, " I shall hear of a subscription 
set on foot for the blind Yankee author. But 
I have written to the editor, Napier, to set it 
right, if he thinks it worth while." " I can't say 
I like to be called blind," he wrote to Colonel 
Aspinwall, at about the same date (May, 1845). 
" I have, it is true, but one eye ; but that has 
done me some service, and, with fair usage, 
will, I trust, do me some more. I have been 
so troubled with inflammations that I have not 
been able to use it for months, and twice for 
several years together." The " Edinburgh " duly 
inserted a correction, but many went on be- 
lieving that Prescott was, as he humorously 
protested that he was not, " high-gravel blind." 
Edward Everett wrote him from London, June 
2, 1845 : — 

" I noticed the note in the ' Edinburgh Re- 
view 9 about your blindness, and I continually 
hear and as often contradict the same state- 
ment in conversation, but I do not always com- 
mand belief. Sir John Hobhouse last Saturday 
evening insisted upon it you were as blind as a 



26 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

mole, and, being a quiet man, I was obliged to 
let him have his own way." 

Maria Edgeworth sighed over the " poor 
man," on the supposition that he was blind. 

Oculists assured him that his eye would be 
adequate to all the ordinary purposes of life, if 
he would give up his literary labors. But Pres- 
cott quietly refused to pay the price. Holding 
himself to the strictest regimen, using every 
precaution that his own experience or the skill 
of physicians might suggest, he yet preferred 
the joys of his intellectual pursuits to the cer- 
tainty of eyesight. Again and again we find 
him in his journals calmly contemplating the 
possibility of absolute blindness. Even then 
there was no regret or slackened resolution ; 
only a weighing of the possibility of his being 
able to press on with his work when wholly 
dependent upon the eyes of others. So long 
as hearing remained to him he would not lose 
heart. " The obstacles," he wrote in his jour- 
nal for October 4, 1830, " I do not believe to 
be insuperable, unless I become deaf as well as 
blind. ... I can always (by hearing even) 
prepare and write twenty-five printed pages in 



«LE TRAVAIL D'AVEUGLE" 27 

a month." This was constantly a last resort in 
his mind, and when, in his later years, his hear- 
ing did grow somewhat dull, his fear that he 
might be left both blind and deaf was some- 
times haunting. As to the actual extent and 
effect of his disablement, a few of his own re- 
cords are worth pages of description : — 

January 16, 1831. " I can dispense entirely 
with my own eyes." 

June 26, 1836. "The discouragements 
under which I have labored have nearly deter- 
mined me, more than once, to abandon the en- 
terprise. I met with a remark of Dr. Johnson 
on Milton at an early period, stating that the 
poet gave up his history of Britain, on becom- 
ing blind, since no one could pursue such investi- 
gations under such disadvantages. This remark 
of the great doctor confirmed me in the resolu- 
tion to attempt the contrary. ... I may per- 
haps, therefore, without vanity take some credit 
to myself for perseverance. I must not over- 
state the case, however, for certainly my eyes 
have not been high-gravel blind all the while." 

March 24, 1846. "The last fortnight I 
have not read or written, in all, five minutes. 



28 WILLIAM HICKLING PKESCOTT 

"My notes have been written by ear-work : 
snail-like progress." 

November 1, 1846. " I reckon time by eye- 
sight, as distances are now reckoned by rail- 
roads. There is about the same relative value 
of the two, in regard to speed." 

In a letter to Augustin Thierry, who was 
entirely blind, dated July 10, 1847, Prescott 
says : " My own eyes have become very dim, so 
that I get not more than an hour or, at most, 
an hour and a half's use of them each day, 
and I fear for the future. But your example 
and your writings have taught me, I hope, — 
philosophy." 

March 1, 1848. " The deplorable state of 
my eyes." 

July 2, 1848. " If I could only have some 
use of eyes ! " 

July 9, 1848. " I use my eyes ten minutes 
at a time, for an hour a day. So I snail it 
along." 

February 15, 1849. " How can I feel en- 
thusiasm when limping like a blind beggar 
on foot ? I must make my brains - — somehow 
or other — save my eyes." 



"LE TRAVAIL D'AVElTGLE " 29 

July 15, 1849. " Worked about three hours 
per diem, of which with my own eyes (grown 
very dim, alas !) about 30 minutes a day." 

October 3, 1853. " Have been quacking 
again for my eyes." 

It was not actually quacking, though Pres- 
cott suffered many things of many physicians. 
The real quack for him would have been 
Hermes in Zadig, with his solemn assurance : 
"If it had been the right eye I could have 
cured it, but the wounds of the left are incur- 
able." 

June 16, 1857. " I fight as — metaphori- 
cally speaking — Cervantes fought at Lepanto 
— with one hand crippled." 

Yet there were compensations, even from 
the point of view of a literary man. For ex- 
ample : — 

" My inability to read handwriting has saved 
me from many unprofitable hours which I used 
to spend in verbal hyper-criticism." 

Another thing which Prescott's disability 
spared him was a part of the primary work of 
historical research. Delving in the archives 
was not for him. He transported them, in- 



30 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

stead, to his own library. Able to employ 
competent European scholars, he had copies 
made of all the manuscripts that bore upon 
his subject, so that at his ease in Boston he 
could study the treasures of Simancas and 
the Vatican, Paris, Berlin, The Hague, and 
the British State Paper Office. Nearly all 
of the manuscript library which Prescott ac- 
cumulated in this way went up in smoke, un- 
fortunately, at the time of the Boston fire of 
1872. How nicely he measured his strength 
against the obstacles, how coolly and compre- 
hensively he planned his campaign, may be 
seen in an early letter of his to the American 
minister in Madrid, Hon. A. H. Everett : — 

Boston, January 1, 1827. 

My dear Sir, — I had just written my 
preceding letter to you when I received yours 
of the 16th of September last, which, from 
some impediment or other, has been more than 
three months on its passage to me. I cannot 
express my sense of your kindness in thus read- 
ily promoting my undertaking. Amid so many 
important public as well as personal concerns 



«LE TRAVAIL D'AVEUGLE" 31 

which necessarily engage you I had no right 
to claim this, though I confess I did expect it. 
I entirely agree with you that it would be 
highly advantageous for me to visit Spain, and 
to dive into the arcana of those libraries which 
you say contain such ample stores of History ; 
and I assure you that, as I am situated, no 
consideration of domestic ease would detain 
me a moment from an expedition which, after 
all, would not continue more than four or five 
months. 

But the state of my eyes, or, rather, eye, — 
for I have the use of only one half of this val- 
uable apparatus, — precludes the possibility of 
it. During the last year this has been sadly 
plagued with what the physicians are pleased 
to call a rheumatic inflammation, for which I 
am now under treatment from Dr. Jackson, 
under the general direction of Mr. Travers, an 
eminent oculist in England. I have always 
found traveling, with its necessary exposures, 
to be of infinite disservice to my eyes, and in 
this state of them particularly I dare not risk 
it. You will ask, with these disadvantages, 
how I can expect to succeed in my enterprise ? 



32 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

I answer that I hope always to have a partial 
use of my eyes, and, for the rest, an intelligent 
reader who is well acquainted with French, 
Spanish, and Latin will enable me to effect 
with my ears what other people do with their 
eyes. The only material inconvenience will be 
a necessarily more tedious and prolonged labor. 

The foregoing letter is but an earnest of the 
cooperation which Prescott had all his life 
from American ministers and consuls in Eu- 
rope. In addition, experts like Gayangos and 
Rich and Lembke ransacked the libraries and 
explored the archives for him, in such a way 
as to place him on an equality with the histor- 
ical searchers who went in person down among 
the dead men. A compliment which Motley 
paid him, apropos of his " Philip II," puts 
this in clear light : — 

" I am astonished at your omniscience. No- 
thing seems to escape you. Many a little trait 
of character, scrap of intelligence, or dab of 
scene-painting which I had kept in my most 
private pocket, thinking I had fished it out of 
unsunned depths, I find already in your pos- 



«LE TRAVAIL D'AVEUGLE" 33 

session, and now of course spread all over the 
globe." 

To aid him at home, Prescott had private 
secretaries to read to him, make notes for him, 
and to decipher and copy his noctographs. 
In this latter form, nearly all his writing was 
done. He first got an inkling of the contriv- 
ance when a youth in England. Thus we find 
him writing to his father and mother : — 

London, July 28, 1816. 

. . . Last evening at Mrs. Delafield's, one 
of the charming families whom I visit on the 
most intimate footing, I heard of a new in- 
vented machine by which blind people were 
enabled to write. I have been before indebted 
to Mrs. D. for an ingenious candle screen. If 
this machine can be procured, you may depend 
upon it you will feel the effects of it. 

And later : — 

Paris, August 24, 1816. 

. . . You must excuse this writing dear 
Parents it is my coup d'essai with my ma- 
chine for writing without looking, is doubt- 
less almost illegible and filled with blunders, 



34 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

as I have not seen a word of it ; the inven- 
tion however is certainly a very fortunate one 
for me, but the process is so tedious. . . . 

In a letter to the publisher of " Homes of 
American Authors," Prescott himself gave a 
sufficiently clear account of his writing appa- 
ratus. His noctograph, he wrote, consisted of 
" a frame of the size of a common sheet of 
letter-paper, with brass wires inserted in it to 
correspond with the number of lines wanted. 
On one side of this frame is pasted a leaf of 
thin carbonated paper, such as is used to ob- 
tain duplicates. Instead of a pen, the writer 
makes use of a stylus, of ivory or agate, the 
latter better or harder. The great difficulties 
in the way of a blind man's writing in the 
usual manner arise from his not knowing 
when the ink is exhausted in his pen, and 
when his lines run into one another. Both 
these difficulties are obviated by this simple 
writing-case, which enables one to do his work 
as well in the dark as in the light." One of 
his noctograph frames is preserved at the Mas- 
sachusetts Historical Society. 



«LE TRAVAIL D'AVEUGLE" 35 

Yet one difficulty remained. Prescott some- 
times forgot to insert the sheet of paper, and 
then, as he once wrote, he would proceed for a 
page " in all the glow of composition " before 
he found that it was in vain. He alluded to 
this contretemps as one of the " whimsical dis- 
tresses " of his method. The resulting manu- 
script, however, was very hard to make out. 
One of his secretaries, Mr. Kobert Carter, who 
was engaged by Prescott in 1847, found as- 
signed him as his first duty the making him- 
self familiar with the noctograph writing. " I 
was appalled," he wrote afterwards, "by its 
appearance. It was nearly as illegible as so 
much shorthand. I could not make out the 
first line, or even the first word." This is fully 
confirmed by what Prescott wrote to R. W. 
Griswold in 1845. He said that the char- 
acters of his noctograph " might indeed pass 
for hieroglyphics, but they were deciphered by 
my secretaries. Yet my hair sometimes stood 
on end at the woeful blunders and misconcep- 
tions of the original which every now and then, 
escaping detection, found their way into the 
first proof of the printer." The noctograph 



36 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

original of this very letter to Griswold, it may 
be added, is preserved among the Prescott 
papers, and itself is a fine example of his 
hieroglyphs. It contained a modest autobio- 
graphical sketch, of which Prescott said at the 
end, " I have talked freely to you at your own 
suggestion, and your own discrimination will 
lead you to select whatever you are willing to 
publish as coming from yourself of this long- 
winded argument concerning one who never 
before wrote a line about himself." Griswold 
had sought material for the condensed bio- 
graphy of Prescott, which he published in his 
" Prose Writers of America." It also appeared 
in Bentley's " Miscellany," and followed Pres- 
cott's notes very closely. Such a sentence as 
this was, of course, Griswold's own : " The 
chaste richness of his style could have resulted 
only from the happiest union of learning with 
genius." And in the editor's conscientious 
effort to make the story appear to " come from 
himself," one finds such a use of the original 
as this : " I have heard him say that his hair 
sometimes stood on end," etc. Perhaps it did 
again when this was read to him. 



"LE TRAVAIL D'AVEUGLE " 37 

To compose by dictation was abhorrent to 
Prescott. Mr. Carter recorded the fact that 
the historian dictated his memoir of Pickering, 
but " did not like the method, and never again 
resorted to it when writing for the public." 
Prescott's own account of the matter was as 
follows : " Thierry, who is totally blind, urged 
me by all means to cultivate the habit of dic- 
tation, to which he had resorted ; and James, 
the eminent novelist, who has adopted this 
habit, finds it favorable to facility in composi- 
tion. But I am too long accustomed to my 
own way to change. And, to say truth, I never 
dictated a sentence in my life for publication 
without its falling so flat on my ear that I 
felt almost ashamed to send it to the press. I 
suppose it is habit." 



CHAPTER IV 

THE INWARD EYE 

Prescott's partial blindness had not merely 
the outward effects before noted : it determined 
the whole course of his life, and had a power- 
ful influence in shaping and beautifying his 
character. No one can read the remarkable 
record in his journals of the way in which he 
turned from a dim world without to a radiant 
world within, took himself in hand, and forged 
laboriously in the dark the tempered weapon 
of his mind and heart, without becoming per- 
suaded that his strength was plucked from his 
very disabling. It was his resolute distilling 
out the soul of goodness in the things evil of 
his life which justified the Rev. N. L. Froth- 
ingham in saying of him, after his death, that 
the mischance which robbed him of eyesight 
could " hardly be called a calamity, so man- 
fully, so sweetly, so wondrously did he not 
only endure it, but convert it to the highest 



THE INWARD EYE 39 

purposes of a faithful, scholarly, serviceable 
life." On Prescott's tomb, as on that of an- 
other gentle scholar and intrepid invalid of New 
England, might have been written, " Meine 
Triibsal war mein Gliick." 

In September of 1815, partly in pursuance 
of plans of travel, and partly in the hope of 
benefiting his health, Prescott sailed from 
Boston for the Azores. His maternal grand- 
father, Thomas Hickling, was then, and until 
his death at ninety-one, consul of the United 
States in the island of St. Michael's, and cor- 
dially welcomed the young American into his 
charming country house at Eosto de Cao. The 
large family of children by a second wife, a 
lady native to the islands, gave Prescott most 
agreeable companions, and for six weeks he 
greatly enjoyed life in the tropics under the 
most favorable circumstances. But, on Novem- 
ber 1, he was seized with a violent inflamma- 
tion in the eye, and for three months was 
confined to a dark room, on a reducing diet. 
His single penciled entry in the diary which he 
was then beginning was, for the whole period 
extending from November 1 to February 1, 



40 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

the one pathetic word "darkness." For a 
large part of the time it was absolute dark- 
ness. Yet his spirits were throughout unflag- 
ging. He was not merely cheerful: he was 
hilarious. He sang, and spouted poetry, and 
mouthed Latin, and walked scores of miles 
within the four walls of his large chamber, — 
from corner to corner, thrusting out his elbows 
to keep himself from running against the sharp 
angles. Indeed, as he wrote to his parents, 
he " emerged " from his " dungeon, not with 
the emaciated figure of a prisoner, but in the 
florid bloom of a bon vivant" A little later, 
when in London, he was told by the leading 
oculist whom he consulted that there was no 
hope of a permanent cure, and that, as he wrote 
home, " I must abandon my profession for- 
ever." But even that could not daunt him, 
and he added, " Do not think that I feel any 
despondency. . . . My spirits are full as high 
as my pulse ; fifteen degrees above the proper 
temperament." In connection with this indom- 
itable temper of Prescott's, with light-hearted- 
ness that never failed, may here be cited what 
his mother said, years after, to her pastor: 



THE INWARD EYE 41 

" This is the very room where William was 
shut up for so many months in utter darkness. 
In all that trying season, when so much had to 
be endured, and our hearts were ready to fail 
us for fear, I never in a single instance groped 
my way across the apartment to take my place 
at his side that he did not salute me with some 
hearty expression of good cheer, — as if we 
were the patients, and it was his place to com- 
fort us." 

The letters and journals which cover the 
residence at St. Michael's and the subsequent 
travels in Europe, 1815-1817, are meagre, but 
revealing. They show us the beginnings of the 
man that was to be. His extraordinarily warm 
family affection is there. His amiable, engag- 
ing, and eminently social nature appears, — 
sometimes with a characteristically whimsical 
turn, as in this entry in his St. Michael's diary 
for October 20, 1815 : " Walk with Donna 
Maria, made love and learned Portuguese." 
There is a touch of the customary pedantry 
of the recent graduate in his frequent over- 
flow of classic citations and allusions. But 
most striking of all is the evidence of a curious 



42 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

and observant mind. His delight in the society 
of his aunt and cousins did not prevent him 
from inquiring into the agriculture and gov- 
ernment of the Azores. Still more in detail, 
and with an eye keen beyond the wont of 
youth at twenty-one, did he scrutinize the pro- 
ductions of the soil and the civil institutions 
of those parts of England, France, and Italy 
through which he journeyed. One is almost 
reminded of Arthur Young and his beloved 
turnips. In the close and shrewd observations 
of these years do we get the clearest prophecy 
of the coming historian. 

It is the making of the man, however, which 
is the immediate concern. The process lies 
open to us in Prescott's journals. Never was 
there a sharper reminder of the physical basis 
of life. It was his bodily crippling that gave 
Prescott an introspective habit. He watched 
himself like an experimenter. Every symptom 
he noted down. His diet he scrupulously re- 
corded. His partition of the day — his hours of 
sleep ; the time given to reading ; the amount 
of exercise and recreation, with the effects of 
each ; social amusements and the tax paid to 



THE INWARD EYE 43 

friendship, — all was written out and studied 
and commented upon for three rigorous years. 
It was not done selfishly, least of all morbidly. 
Prescott had a problem to solve. How could 
he do the work of a man without a man's eye- 
sight? What regimen would maintain his 
necessarily limited activity at its highest and 
most continuous flow? What husbanding of 
the hours would make up for the handicap 
under which he must always labor ? It was to 
answer those questions satisfactorily to himself 
that Prescott undertook his prolonged self- 
scrutiny and self-testing. He did it almost 
with scientific objectivity. He was as cool and 
unbiased as if writing of another. Not one 
hint of a diseased consciousness appears in the 
whole record. In this respect, I think, the lit- 
erature of diaries may be searched in vain for 
a parallel. To put one's nature, physical and 
mental, under the microscope daily, yet to be- 
tray, not simply no morbid feeling, but almost 
no sense of self at all ; to be calm, even jocose, 
while recording ill-health and noting limita- 
tions ; to preserve a sunny temper while wres- 
tling with the problem how to make a life bear 



44 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

fruit in darkness ; and to do all this in a series 
of records meant only for his own eye and his 
own guidance, — such was the high and unique 
achievement of Prescott. 

While still in Europe he began mortifying 
the flesh. A Paris physician bade him never 
exceed two glasses of wine per diem. The 
story of a traveling companion was that Pres- 
cott at once seized upon the largest wine-glass 
on the table, to measure by. However that 
may be, we have in his own handwriting a 
register of his daily wine-drinking, covering 
a period of two years and nine months. It was 
no calendar of a sybarite. The effect on his 
eye was the one standard to which everything 
was referred. Thus when we find him writing, 
July 22, 1820, "Went to Nahant — drank 
too much wine in Boston," we know that he 
simply meant too much for his eye. Wine was 
prescribed for him ; he found it useful ; the 
only thing required was to work out a rule as 
to kind and quantity, and this he did with an 
amazing sort of impersonal zeal. And every 
other part or act of his daily life was inter- 
rogated in the same spirit and to the same 



THE INWARD EYE 45 

end. After months of minute inspection and 
full experiment, aiming at the correct regimen, 
he recorded the following : — 

" Eat meat ; light breakfasts ; temperate 
dinners ; light teas ; no suppers ; simple food ; 
no great variety at dinner ; exercise = 4 miles 
pr. day at 3 or 4 different times ; light not 
intense, but full, clear ; no spirits ; no wine 
except excellent and old ; not exceed 4 glasses 
of that, nor of tener than once in 5 days ; read 
moderately large print, when eye is well ; not 
walk in the cold or wind ; no wine when I 
have a cold ; no goggles ? not sit up late" 

A few disconnected extracts may further 
show the character of the entries : — 

March 4, 1818. "Accursed cold — God's 
will be done ! " 

February 4, 1819. " A cold — engagement." 

October 16, 1819. " Cold heightened by 
imprudence." 

March 1, 1820. " Much hurt by injudicious 
reading." 

January — , 1820. " N. B. Theatre, late 
Balls, smoking, supper parties, always perni- 
cious — ergo, not go — or not stay late." 



46 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

"Rule about balls. Not more than one a 
week, and not stay after 11, or more than 
21 h." 

" Club, not stay after 12." 

From the physical, Prescott's self -discipline 
passed on as rigorously to the mental and the 
moral. His athletic training of brain and pen 
for the peculiar work he gave them is reserved 
for a later page ; but he read his soul as atten- 
tively as he did his mind or body. His habit 
was to keep by him a complete inventory of 
his moral qualities, — chiefly a list of the faults 
against which he set himself to strive. Slips 
written by his own hand, and seen by his eye 
alone, he kept in a large envelope, each one 
bearing a record of what he thought amiss in 
himself. Over this card-catalogue of defects he 
would periodically go, — usually on a Sunday 
morning after church, — and conscientiously 
check up his moral account. One besetting sin 
mastered, its record would be blotted out ; a 
new one detected, it would have its scrupulous 
entry. To the last he kept up these recurring 
self-examination s, and after his death the en- 
velope was found, marked, " To be burnt." To 



THE INWARD EYE 47 

ashes the whole was indeed reduced. Not 
enough to make a moment's blaze, — the faults 
of one so universally loved ! " The only man," 
wrote Hillard, " whom we never heard any one 
speak against." 

In the early journals there are some traces of 
the struggle of Prescott's spirit to find itself. 
A few of these may be properly transcribed : — 

" Since the age of 23, the most wretched 
period of my life was when my 2^ssions and 
temper controlled me, the most happy, when I 
controlled them." 

" Without answering for others, I may say 
that these qualities of mind are sufficient for 
my happiness : — 

I. Good Nature. II. Manliness. III. Inde- 
pendence. IV. Industry. V. Honesty. VI. 
Cheerful Views. VII. Religious Confidence." 

Finally, as if bursting into a " let us hear 
the conclusion of the whole matter," 

Voila. 
P. S. I have been perfectly contented, light- 
hearted & happy, ye last 2 weeks — with my 
books 7 hrs. & Domestic Society — & Benev* 
Feels (Not thinking of it) Not Vanity " 



CHAPTER V 

PREPARATION 

To Prescott, as to "gentle Sir Philip Sid- 
ney," it might have been said, " thou knewest 
what belonged to a scholar ; thou knewest what 
pains, what toil, what travail, conduct to per- 
fection." The records of his rigid discipline 
from his twenty-sixth to his fortieth year remain 
as proof of what would otherwise seem, consid- 
ering his handicap, the incredible amount of 
work he got through. With the sure prospect 
of indifferent health and dependence upon the 
eyes of another, he attacked light-heartedly a 
mass of reading which would have taxed the 
rudest physique. His toils, moreover, were 
undertaken through no necessity, — except the 
spur of a noble mind, — since his father's 
ample means assured him comfort and even 
luxury. But we find him, soon after his return 
from Europe in 1817, resolutely sitting down 
to perfect his Latin, and to make himself 



PREPARATION 49 

master of three modern literatures. "I am 
now," he wrote in his journal early in 1822, 
" twenty-six years of age, nearly. By the time 
I am thirty, God willing, I propose, with what 
stock I have already on hand, to be a very 
well-read English scholar; to be acquainted 
with the classical and useful authors, prose 
and poetry, in Latin, French, and Italian, 
and especially in history ; I do not mean a 
critical or profound acquaintance. The two 
following years, 31-32, I may hope to learn 
German, and to have read the classical Ger- 
man writers ; and the translations, if my eye 
continues weak, of the Greek. And this is 
enough for general discipline." For German, 
he had to offer Spanish as a substitute. To 
his great regret and temporary deep depres- 
sion, his feeble eyesight compelled him to give 
up the Gothic script. A secretary could make 
French or Spanish intelligible to him ; but he 
found that, without a dangerous strain of his 
weak eye, he could not thoroughly acquire 
the language of the learned, which would have 
been so useful to him in his historical pur- 
suits. Accordingly, after much deliberation 



50 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

and long balancing of his strength against the 
obstacles, he decided that it was out of his 
reach. The remainder of his programme, how- 
ever, he adhered to religiously and carried out 
triumphantly. Aided at first by his friend 
Gardiner and a devoted sister, who read to 
him hours every day, and later on by private 
secretaries, whom he began regularly to employ 
in 1824, he put an immense amount of mate- 
rial behind him. During several of those years 
of preparation, furthermore, Prescott had the 
good fortune to be able to use his eye without 
harm. Thus on January 24, 1829, we find the 
record : — 

"By the blessing of Heaven I have been 
enabled to have the free use of my eyes in 
the day time during the preceding weeks with- 
out the exception of a single day, although de- 
prived for nearly a fortnight of my habitual 
exercise. I trust I have not abused this great 
privilege." 

In English, Prescott's reading was wide- 
ranging. The niceties of philology were not 
for him, though one of the heads of the " course 
of studies " which he marked out for himself 



PREPARATION 51 

in October, 1821, was "Principles of gram- 
mar, correct writing, etc." His main strength 
he expended upon another section of his plan, 
namely, " Fine prose-writers of English from 
Koger Ascham to the present day, principally 
with reference to their mode of writing — not 
including historians, except as far as requisite 
for an acquaintance with style." His note- 
books survive to tell the tale of his faithful 
performance of the task. Ascham, Sidney, 
Bacon, Browne, Kaleigh, Milton; the great 
preachers; the old English drama; romances 
and ballads ; historians and critics down to 
his contemporaries Jeffrey and Gifford, — all 
passed in review before him. Nor did the 
names and volumes stand to him as a mere 
catalogue. He read, marked, and inwardly 
digested. Not extracts, but critiques, fill his 
commonplace books. " This criticism and anal- 
ysis," he wrote in June, 1823, " shall be made 
weekly, at each time reviewing it as a whole. 
. . . The reflections shall be made carefully, 
for it is obvious that superficial considerations 
are not worth recording, as the recollection of 
them can in no way add to the solid stores 



52 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

of knowledge." Ticknor gave two specimens 
of Prescott's condensed characterizations, As- 
cham and Milton. I will add the one of 
Burke, remarkably near the white for so young 
a critic : — 

" Splendid, fervent, very declamatory ; a 
fiery imagination, following up his game with 
argument and illustration and emphasis, with 
a vehemence and rapidity that cannot be re- 
sisted. As declamatory as Bolingbroke, but 
more force, more of the 'vivida vis animi,' 
rather glowing with the force of his own im- 
petuosity than with the studied embellishment 
of fancy. Borrowing his images, examples 
from the meanest sources, no matter where so 
long as they enforce his purpose, yet too re- 
dundant, even tedious." 

French and Italian studies came next, and 
were equally generous. Into French literature 
he went, as he expressed it, "deeper and 
wider " than into Latin, since his object was 
not simply to strengthen his memory of old 
favorites, but to acquire a familiarity with an 
entire body of writers. From Froissart to 
Chateaubriand he covered the ground with 



PREPARATION 53 

singular thoroughness. He collected material 
for the life of Moliere which he at one time 
intended to write. Italian he pursued with 
more delight than French. His favorite quota- 
tions, in letters and in his journals, were from 
Italian poets. In company with Ticknor, and 
aided by an Italian scholar living an exile in 
Boston, he pushed his reading far beyond the 
beaten track, and at one time thought seri- 
ously of writing a history of Italian literature. 
The solidity of his attainments in this field 
may be measured by his two elaborate articles 
on Italian Poetry in the " North American 
Review "of October, 1824, and July, 1831. 
Spanish, Prescott took up through a happy 
accident of friendship. In his journal for Feb- 
ruary 13, 1825, he wrote: "I began the 
study of Spanish, December 1, 1824, since 
which period I have written daily exercises, 
studied grammar, read, etc." The prompting 
came through his fondness for Ticknor, who 
was then delivering in Harvard those lectures 
which afterwards grew into his monumental 
"History of Spanish Literature." Thus at 
more than twenty-eight Prescott began the 



54 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

study of the language that was to bulk largest 
in his life's work. His knowledge of its litera- 
ture early became extensive, and his collection 
of Spanish books ranked second after Tick- 
nor's. He came to think and write in Spanish 
with great freedom, though his command of 
the language was not perfect : in the letters 
and entries in his journal which he wrote in 
Spanish there are occasional minor lapses. 
And, singularly enough, he did not at first 
find Spanish simpdtico. He wrote to his 
friend Bancroft at Christmas, 1824, " I am 
battling with the Spaniards this winter, but I 
have not the heart for it that I had for the 
Italians." He added, with an amusing uncon- 
sciousness of what his fate was to be, " I 
doubt whether there are many valuable things 
that the key of knowledge will unlock in that 
language ! " 

Prescott seems early to have felt a bent to- 
wards historical composition. About 1822 he 
wrote in his private memoranda, " History has 
always been a favorite study with me ; and I 
have long looked forward to it as a subject on 
which I was, one day, to exercise my pen. . . . 



PREPARATION 55 

But it requires time, and a long time, before 
the mind can be prepared for this department 
of writing. I think thirty-five years of age 
[he was then twenty-six] full soon enough to 
put pen to paper." The story of his quest of 
a congenial theme comes later ; but here may 
be noted a few details of the methods he pur- 
sued in preparing for the work that awaited 
him. Discipline in industry and concentra- 
tion of mind were among the ends which he 
earliest set before himself. Thus, on Decem- 
ber 1, 1824, he wrote in his journal : " I have 
read with no method and very little diligence 
or spirit for three months [it was about the 
time of his dejection at having to give up Ger- 
man]. ... To the end of my life I trust I 
shall be more avaricious of time [this phrase 
frequently dropped off Prescott's pen] and 
never put up with a smaller average than 7 
hours intellectual occupation per diem." Six 
years later, May 13, 1830, he exhorted him- 
self to " imitate the perseverance and literary 
ardor of the Germans. I must be avaricious 
of time as regards domestic pleasures." He 
was able to record progress in fixity of at- 



56 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

tention. " I can think," he wrote on June 1, 
1829, " in one place as well as another, and in 
company as well as alone. I can work rapidly 
in proportion to the concentration of my 
thoughts ; I ought to be able to confine these 
to any given subject for eight or ten hours a 
day." 

" Maxims in Composition " were given a 
place in the first of his journals, and were 
often recurred to. Some of these were of the 
mnemonic order. 

In October, 1824, he elaborated twenty 
" Eules for Composition." In these a note of 
independence is firmly struck. " State with 
confidence what I know to be true." " Rely 
on myself for estimation and criticism of my 
composition." " Write what I think without 
affectation upon subjects I have examined." 
Withal, Prescott had a strong grasp on real- 
ity. He longed to saturate himself in matter. 
Thus on July 3, 1828, he said to himself, 
" Facts, facts, whether in the shape of inci- 
dents or opinions, are what I must rely upon." 
Yet later on he added, — what shows that he 



PREPARATION 57 

was neither a logician of the " all-case " order, 
nor an artist who knew not what to leave out, 
— " Mem. Never introduce what is irrelevant 
or superfluous or unconnected for the sake of 
crowding in more facts." 

Prescott's style, the care with which he 
built it up, and the conscientious attention 
he gave to every defect which his own critical 
eye or the acuteness of friend or reviewer 
could detect in it, may best be considered in 
connection with the writings themselves. But 
so much as has been given was necessary to 
show the temper in which he wrought during 
all those years preceding the time when, as 
Webster said of him, he "burst upon the 
world like a comet.*' Not the least important 
element in his preparation was his happy mar- 
riage. This took place on his twenty-fourth 
birthday, May 4, 1820. He married Susan, 
daughter of Thomas C. Amory and Hannah 
Linzee, his wife. It was a felicitous union, 
singularly helpful to Prescott. Long after- 
wards he wrote to a friend, " Contrary to the 
assertion of La Bruyere, — who somewhere says 



58 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

that the most fortunate husband finds reason 
to regret his condition at least once in twenty- 
four hours, — I may truly say that I have found 
no such day in the quarter of a century that 
Providence has spared us to each other." 



CHAPTER VI 

BEGINNINGS 

Pkescott's first appearance in print was some- 
thing of a frolic affair. " The Club-Room," of 
which he was editor, and which ran its course 
in four numbers, had its origin in a literary 
and social club, formed in 1818. Beginning 
with a small number of intimates, it rose to a 
membership of twenty-four, and for more than 
forty years was a pleasure and solace to Pres- 
cott. He was from the first its leading spirit. 
When the proposal came to print some of the 
papers read at the meetings, it was Prescott 
who suggested a periodical form of publica- 
tion, and it was he who was appointed its 
editor. He undertook the function seriously 
enough, making a note in his journal of the 
names of those who agreed to furnish him 
" 6 printed pages at a week's notice once in 
three weeks for the year 1820." But the dews 
of mortality as well as of youth were upon the 



60 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

venture from the start, and its birth and burial 
were not too far apart to be recorded on a 
single page of Prescott's note-book. Here 
it is : — 

"February 5, 1820. 'Club Room, No. I.' published 
containing : 

Club-Room, Happiness, Recollections, Castle-building, 
Warren. Parsons. Dexter. Ware. 

500 copies. 



« March 10th, 1820. < Club Room, No. II.' published 
— containing 44 pages — Club-room — Lake George, 
Ennui — Village Grave-yard — Calais. 

" April 26th, 1820. < Club Room, No. III.' published 
containing 56 pages — Sea of y e Poets. Sequel to Re- 
collectionsc Travels. Memorial. Vale of Alleriat. 
Julietta Promeoni — price 45. 

"July 19, 1820. 'Club Room, No. IV.' published 
containing 39 pages — Voyage of Discovery. Ruins of 
Rome — price 37^ cts. 

" And here ended this precious publication." 

Prescott's own contributions are three in 
number. One was the " Vale of Alleriat," a 
sentimental tale ; another was " Calais," a trifle 
of a cleared-up ghost story, which the author 
states that he gives " as it was told to us," and 
which Ticknor informs us that Washington 



BEGINNINGS 61 

Allston "used to tell with striking effect." 
This would imply that Allston had an extraor- 
dinary power of making the tame vivid. In the 
second number Prescott wrote the introductory 
article giving a whimsical account of the nam- 
ing and purposes of the Club-Room. Referring 
to the search of the hero of La Mancha for 
" curious names " [this was four years before 
Prescott began Spanish], he says : — 

" We had actually no less than seven meet- 
ings extraordinary to adjust a title for our 
paper. The Epicureans would have christened 
it Hotch-pot (the old English for pudding) 
containing, as Lord Lyttleton informs us, ' not 
one thing only, but one thing with many others 
together,' which by the variety of its ingredi- 
ents would show forth the very nature of our 
work. But to this the Dyspeptics (a modern 
party who have gradually grown out of the 
former, and like many other colonies, now 
quarrel with the parent state) objected, from 
the persuasion that so gross a name must 
necessarily exclude it from all persons of deli- 
cate tastes — and digestion. 

The Cynics recommended ' Tales of the 



u 



62 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

Tub,' and the Peripatetics proposed ' Veloci- 
pede.' In this crisis, being, as usual, unani- 
mously divided in our opinions, we determined 
to follow the example of the ancient Greeks, 
who when each man had voted himself the best 
general at the siege of Troy, wisely balloted 
for the second-best ; and in precisely the same 
manner did we at length resolve upon the very 
ingenious name of the Club-Room. 

"As this is the proper place we cannot re- 
frain from felicitating both ourselves and the 
public upon the selection of so significant a 
title, which, we do assure them, is a careful 
translation from the ^vfjarwo-iov of Xenophon, 
and was done into English by a learned Pro- 
fessor of the University, solely with a view to 
this publication "... 

" Our book has been favored with the usual 
introductory compliments paid to works of 
merit upon their entrance into life ; and has 
been denounced as both flat and stale, and 
some promising little critics have even discov- 
ered that we are downright imitators of Sal- 
magundi and the Sketch Book. But all such 
reflections we put down to the account of sheer 



BEGINNINGS 63 

ignorance and bad taste, to say no worse, and 
we recommend their authors to read deeper 
and grow wiser. 

" We would caution any ignorant or mali- 
cious people against imagining this work to be 
the cream of our wits, for, in truth, it is nothing 
but the froth and overflowings of them, which, 
if they choose, they may scoop up, and if not, 
it/inay run to waste ; we care not a groat." 

More serious work followed. In 1821 Pres- 
cott began to contribute to the " North Ameri- 
can Review," and for more than thirty years 
thereafter he rarely failed to produce what he 
called "my annual peppercorn for the Old 
North." From a memorandum of uncertain 
date, but probably written in 1820, is taken 
this account of his plans in regard to this form 
of literary activity, and his conception of the 
way in which it would fit into his general 
scheme. " I will write a review no oftener than 
once in three numbers of the 4 No. American 
Review ' — no oftener, and print only what I 
think will add to my reputation ... In the 
interim I will follow a course of reading and 
make the subjects of my reviews, as far as I 



64 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

can, fall in with this course, or with what I 
have before read. . . . Pursue this course till 
I am thirty . . . Mem. I will never engage 
to write for a number." For a time Prescott 
thought of seeking print in the more noted 
English reviews. Through Sparks he offered 
an article to the " Quarterly," and a letter from 
Lockhart, June 9, 1828, records the fact that 
the editor had " perused Mr. Prescott's essay, 
and prays that Mr. Sparks will tell him that 
he has pleasure in accepting it for the ' Quar- 
terly Beview.' " Lockhart also requested that 
Prescott would indicate subjects on which he 
might be asked to write other reviews. The 
article in question was that on the " Poetry 
and Romance of the Italians." Its publication 
was so long delayed, however, that Prescott 
finally reclaimed his manuscript and gave it to 
the " North American." It was there printed in 
1831. Useful as Prescott's review-writing was 
to him, both as pen-practice and means of re- 
pute, he came later, like many an enfranchised 
hack, to have a poor opinion of it. In 1843 
he wrote in his journal : " Criticism has got to 
be an old story. It is impossible for any one 



BEGINNINGS 65 

who has done that sort of work himself to have 
any respect for it. How can one critic look 
another in the face without laughing ? " After 
the date last mentioned he did no reviewing 
except at the behest of friendship. His charm- 
ing friend and correspondent for many years, 
Madame Calderon de la Barca, had the ad- 
vantage of a notice by Prescott of her viva- 
cious " Travels in Mexico." In 1850 Ticknor's 
"Spanish Literature" claimed a similar tri- 
bute. On this subject the diary yields two 
extracts : — 

September 12, 1849. " Now for the review — 
my last and only in this line, — though for the 
author's sake I shall do it con amove" 

October 25, 1849. "Have read for and 
written an article in the ' North American Re- 
view ' on my friend Ticknor's great work — 
my last effort in the critical line . . . Now, 
Muse of History, never more will I desert thy 
altar!" 

He did, however, on a single occasion more, 
to wit : — 

September 28, 1853. " Also written a no- 
tice of Hillard's ' Six Months in Italy ' — thin 



66 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

porridge — not the book, but my notice of it. 
It will make 10 pp. of my History in quantity 
— a column and a half of the ' National Intel- 
ligencer,' an' they will print it." 

Making out once in his journal a list of all 
his review articles and fugitive contributions 
to literary periodicals, Prescott affixed the too 
contemptuous judgment, " This sort of ephem- 
eral trash had better be forgotten by me as 
soon as possible." When, in 1845, his London 
publisher, Bentley, proposed a volume of Pres- 
cott's miscellaneous writings, — it appeared as 
" Critical and Historical Essays," — the author 
spoke of the matter as "trumpery" and a 
" rechauffe, of old bones." However, he assented 
to their publication, muttering good-natured 
protests to himself and his correspondents. A 
few of his private entries will show his attitude 
of mind. 

March 8, 1845. " Finished doctoring my old 
articles in the N. A. for Bentley. Have run 
them over very superficially. If they prove as 
hard reading to the public as to me, I pity 
them. But to me they are an old tale." 

September 15, 1845. "Kec'd my vol. of 



BEGINNINGS 67 

4 Mis ' from Bentley . . • As to the portrait 
of the author, it shows more imagination, I 
suspect, than anything in the book." 

The American edition had the Harper im- 
print. 

. June 24, 1845. " I have made an agree- 
ment with the Harpers. . . . My portrait is 
to be prefixed thereto — which they consider, 
I suppose, putting a good face on the mat- 
ter." 

What Prescott himself rated so low need not 
long detain us. These early essays of his are 
plentifully bedewed with learning ; they show 
us an author almost uniformly urbane and 
gentle ; in them we can see his historical spirit 
preening its wings, and his historical style in 
the forming. Judged by the standards of the 
day, they are elegant specimens of leisurely 
reviewing. But for real criticism, deep insight 
into literature or life, vigorous comment, biting 
characterization, phrases that haunt the mem- 
ory, one would turn to them in vain. 

A just idea of Prescott's critical faculty, as 
compared with Carlyle's, may be had by set- 
ting over against each other the reviews of 



68 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

Lockhart's " Scott " which the two men wrote. 
Both were published in the same year, 1838, 
Prescott's in the " North American," Carlyle's 
in the "London and Westminster Review." 
The American is flowing and refined; the 
Scotchman jerky and uncouth. Prescott de- 
bates whether Lockhart may be thought guilty 
of " occasionally exposing what a nice tender- 
ness for the reputation of Scott should have led 
him to conceal." Carlyle exults that the book 
is no "vacuum biography," leaving its sub- 
ject in "the white beatified-ghost condition." 
"How delicate decent is English biography, 
bless its mealy mouth ! " Passing to personal 
judgment, Prescott ranks Scott among the 
greatest. " There is no man of historical celeb- 
rity that we now recall who combined, in so 
eminent a degree, the highest qualities of the 
moral, the intellectual, and the physical." As 
if in protest against such easy conferring of 
the laurel, the ruggeder Scot strives to mea- 
sure his countryman more accurately : " It is 
good that there be a certain degree of pre- 
cision in our epithets. It is good to understand, 
for one thing, that no popularity and open- 



BEGINNINGS 69 

mouthed wonder of all the world, continued 
even for a long series of years, can make a 
man great," etc. 

Even harder for Prescott to bear would be 
a comparison of his essay on Cervantes with 
Lowell's brief lecture on " Don Quixote." The 
earlier writer abounds in information. He 
gives an excellent biographical sketch of Cer- 
vantes. He enumerates all the editions of 
"Don Quixote," drawing from the editor of 
one of them, F. Sales, a letter expressing his 
" ineffable pleasure " at reading so .masterly a 
review. All is high-bred and scholarly, but of 
criticism, strictly speaking, the essay is blame- 
less. Lowell was able, for his address to work- 
ingmen, to draw from his scribblings on the 
margin of his own " Don Quixote " shrewder 
remarks and more illuminating comments than 
were dreamed of in Prescott's philosophy. In 
the later writer we see, what we do not in the 
earlier, learning subordinated to interpreta- 
tion, and a creative work followed sympatheti- 
cally by a creative mind. Prescott was prima- 
rily an historian ; and luckily it could not be 
said of him, as it has been of no less a man 



70 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

than Sainte-Beuve, that lie was a writer sui- 
cide en critique. 

Along with these minor writings of Prescott 
may be conveniently grouped his "Life of 
Charles Brockden Brown " and his " Memoir 
of John Pickering." The former he undertook 
for the collection of American biographies 
edited by Jared Sparks. It was a slight but 
graceful bit of writing, which much exagger- 
ates the merits of Brown, as Prescott himself, 
later in life, was the first to acknowledge. His 
private record shows the speed with which the 
work was done, and the author's view of it at 
the time. 

July 14, 1833. " Began to write on Brown's 
life — at Nahant." 

July 29, 1833. "Finished Brown's Life 
and Writings. Written at the rate of between 
3 and 4 noctographs per day. I am afraid 
it will verify the proverb of 'easy writing,' 
etc. The subject proved not at all to my 
taste. • . . I could not have finished one of 
his novels unless as a job." 

However, his editor was satisfied, witness 
the following letter : — 



BEGINNINGS 71 

Cambridge, August 9, 1833. 
Dear Prescott, — The Life has come to 
hand, and I have read it with great pleasure 
and perfect satisfaction on all accounts. It is 
just the thing it should be, and you need not 
fear to put your name to it. As a literary 
criticism upon Brown's genius and writings, it 
is beautiful, spirited, and graphic. There is 
nothing wanting but more biographical inci- 
dents and personal traits. These are not to be 
created, and if there were none to be found, 
why, there was an end of the matter. I can- 
not think that Brown's friends will not be 
pleased with your representation. If not, they 
will be more unreasonable than is to be ex- 
pected. • . . All your dates are 1^93, etc. 
This shows that your mind was running on 
the age of Ferdinand and Isabella. Go on 
and prosper, and believe me, with kind remem- 
brances and regards to your family, 

As ever your sincere friend, 

Jared Sparks. 

The memoir of Pickering was undertaken 
at the request of the Massachusetts Historical 



72 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

Society, in whose collections (Third Series, 
Vol. X) it is to be found. It was a brief 
sketch of a friend who deserved commemora- 
tion for scholarly attainments and a quietly 
useful life. " It will not be long," wrote Pres- 
cott of this undertaking, " but, long or short, 
it will be a labor of love ; for there is no man 
whom I honored more. . . . He was a true 
and kind friend to me ; and, from the first 
moment of my entering on my historic career 
down to the close of his life, he watched over 
my literary attempts with the deepest interest. 
It will be a sad pleasure for me to pay an 
honest tribute to the good man's worth." 






CHAPTER VII 

THE QUEST OF A THEME 

Prescott's bent towards historical writing 
declared itself strongly very soon after Lis loss 
of sight compelled him to abandon the law. 
One letter of his notes a tendency to histori- 
cal studies perceptible in 1819. " A man," 
he wrote, " must find something to do," and 
to the writing of history he turned as by a 
deep and sure instinct. In a letter to Dr. 
Eufus Ellis, dated June 1, 1857, he said: "I 
had early conceived a strong passion for his- 
torical writing, to which, perhaps, the reading 
of Gibbon's ' Autobiography ' contributed 
not a little. I proposed to make myself an his- 
torian in the best sense of the term." It was 
long, however, before he found the subject truly 
adapted to his ambition and his powers. His 
search for it is minutely recorded in his jour- 
nal, during all his years of preparatory study. 



74 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

An early entry took a broad survey of pos- 
sible 

" SUBJECTS FOR COMPOSITION." 

" L Autobiography, a la Alfieri [this was 
later struck through with his pen] . 

" II. Parallel between the Greek Demigods 
and Heroes of Chivalry. 

" III. Comparison between the literatures of 
different nations. 

" IV. Defense of any authors or species of 
composition in the English tongue against 
any foreign critics who may have impugned 
them." 

[A dozen others of the kind ending with] 

"XVI. CuiBono?" 

Soon his scope was narrowed, at the same 
time that the intensity of his researches was 
heightened. All that is necessary is to trace 
the trail as he has blazed it. About 1822 he 
wrote : — 

"It is not rash, in the dearth of a well- 
written American history, to entertain the 
hope of throwing light upon this matter — 
especially with the rich materials which are 
now buried in pedantic lumber and foreign 



THE QUEST OF A THEME 75 

languages in the Ebeling collection. But it 
requires time, and a long time, before the 
mind can be prepared for this department of 
writing." 

There speaks Prescott's passion for thor- 
oughly documenting himself. It never left 
him. And he took time. 

October 16, 1825. " I have been so hesi- 
tating and reflecting upon what I shall do that 
I have, in fact, done nothing. I have looked 
into one or two pamphlets : into Schlegel's 
'Histoire du XVIII Steele.' " 

October 30, 1825. " I have passed the last 
fortnight in examination of a suitable subject 
for historical composition, looking over cata- 
logues, references, etc. It is well to determine 
with caution and accurate inspection." 

Soon he began to hear Spain calling. By 
Christmas of the same year he was writ- 
ing:— 

" I have been hesitating between two topics 
for historical investigation — Spanish history 
from the invasion of the Arabs to the consoli- 
dation of the monarchy under Charles V, or 
a history of the revolution of ancient Rome, 



76 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

which converted the republic into an empire. 
A third subject which invites me is a bio- 
graphical sketch of eminent geniuses, with 
criticisms on their productions and on the 
character of their age. I shall probably select 
the first, as less difficult of execution than the 
second, and as more novel and entertaining than 
the last." 

But the full spell of the Peninsula was not 
yet upon him. He wavered and deliberated 
afresh. This he did not mind. " I care not 
how long a time I take for it, provided I am 
diligent all that time." Again he canvassed 
the Roman theme. But on January 1, 1826, 
he wrote : — 

" The great and learned Niebuhr has been 
employed these dozen years upon it. . . . 
Shall I beat the bushes after this? I have 
not quite decided, but I think not." 

January 8, 1826. " I have decided to aban- 
don the Roman subject." 

Under the same date he recorded : — 

" A work on the revolutions of Italian lit- 
erature has invited my consideration this 
week. ... It would not be new after the 



THE QUEST OF A THEME 77 

production of Sismondi and the abundant 
notices in modern Reviews. Literary history- 
is not so amusing as civil. Cannot I contrive 
to embrace the gist of the Spanish subject 
without involving myself in the unwieldy, bar- 
barous records of a thousand years ? What 
new and interesting topics may be admitted 
— not forced — into the reigns of Ferdinand 
and Isabella? ... A Biography will make 
me responsible for a limited space only ; will 
require much less reading (a great considera- 
tion with me) ; will offer the deeper interest 
which always attaches to minute developments 
of character, and a continuous, closely con- 
nected narrative. . . . The age of Ferdinand 
is most important as containing the germs of 
the modern system of European politics. . . . 
It is in every respect an interesting and mo- 
mentous period of history ; the materials am- 
ple, authentic, — I will chew upon this matter, 
and decide this week." 

More than twenty years later, a penciled 
note on the foregoing passage ran, " This was 
the first germ of my conception of Ferdinand 
and Isabella." He was now hot on the scent. 



78 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

Yet he made further faults. On January 15, 
1826, he was "still doubting." He thought 
the Italian subject had " some advantages over 
the Spanish." He had the matter better in 
hand. He had fleshed his pen upon it already. 
His " capacity for doing justice to the other 
subject" he questioned. Still "the Spanish 
subject will be more new than the Italian ; " 
" more interesting to the majority of readers, 
more useful to me by opening another and 
more practical department of study." He would 
need a " preliminary year " of investigation to 
make sure of his ground, but " on the whole, 
the inconvenience of that was overbalanced by 
the advantages of the Spanish topic." 

Consequently, on January 19, 1826, Pres- 
cott wrote, " I subscribe to the 4 History of the 
Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.' ' Over 
against this entry he set, in 1847, the note, 
" A fortunate choice." 

But it had many times to be renewed and 
confirmed, after repeated vacillation. Almost 
at the beginning of plans for airfassing mate- 
rial and laying out his campaign, he was smit- 
ten with an access of inflammation in his eye, 



THE QUEST OF A THEME 79 

and for four months had to pass all his time 
in a dark room. But his resolution was not 
shaken. He had himself read to from four to 
six hours a day by his secretary. " Traveling 
with this lame gait, I may yet hope in five 
or six years to reach the goal." But a little 
later hesitation reappears. On October 1, he 
wrote : — 

" As it may probably be some years before 
I shall be able to use my own eyes in study, 
or even find a suitable person to read foreign 
languages to me, I have determined to post- 
pone my Spanish subject, and to occupy my- 
self with an ' Historical Survey of English 
Literature.' The subject has never been dis- 
cussed as a whole, and therefore would be 
somewhat new, and, if well conducted, popu- 
lar. But the great argument with me is, that, 
while it is a subject with which my previous 
studies have made me tolerably acquainted and 
have furnished me with abundance of analo- 
gies in foreign literatures, it is one which I 
may investigate nearly as well with my ears 
as with my eyes, and it will not be difficult 
to find good readers in the English, though 



80 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

extremely difficult in any foreign language. 
Faustum sit" 

It required, however, only five weeks of re- 
connoitring the new fortress to convince him 
that the old one was his true point of attack. 
The record for November 5, 1826, is, " I have 
again, and I trust finally, determined to prose- 
cute my former subject, the Reign of Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella." 

But the last doubt was not yet vanquished. 
As late as June 7, 1828, 1 find this record : — 

" Renewed studies in Italian literature make 
me hesitate whether I should not prefer it as 
a matter of history to the Spanish subject 
which I had already chosen." 

In two weeks the pendulum had swung back 
again : — 

June 22. " I confirm my previous decision. 
. . . Shame on my doubtings, delays, and 
idleness ! " 

At last, — 

July 3, 1828. " Finally, for the hundredth 
time, after a full and accurate reflection on the 
whole matter, I confirm my preference and 
choice of the Spanish subject." 



THE QUEST OF A THEME 81 

After that date, no trace of relaxed purpose 
is to be found. To use one of Prescott's favor- 
ite quotations, 

" Rapido ma rapido con leggi," 

he thereafter pressed on with the ten years of 
labor which went to the making of " Ferdinand 
and Isabella." 

At this point may be most conveniently 
mentioned several literary projects which Pres- 
cott, in later years, was urged to take up, but 
all of which he declined. 

Richard Ford, writing to Sumner, July 1, 
1839, after telling him that he might " well 
be proud of your countryman " for his " Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella," — " this accession to Eng- 
lish literature, " — added : — 

" I have ventured to suggest to him a new 
subject, an inquiry into the condition of the 
middle classes and people of Spain from the 
fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. He is, 
I conceive, admirably calculated to undertake 
this interesting theme ; I know no modern au- 
thor of greater perseverance, research, and ac- 
curacy, nor one possessing his talent of placing 
facts agreeably and truly before his reader." 



82 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

On June 20, 1844, Benjamin F. French, of 
New Orleans, addressed a letter to Prescott, 
urging him to write the history of Louisiana. 
The attraction of the subject, and its relation 
to Prescott' s own field, were duly set forth, 
together with an offer to put the writer's col- 
lection of material — including some rare 
works — at the historian's disposal. 

Professor Moses Stuart of Andover sent 
Prescott a complimentary, yet discriminating, 
letter, praising his history as having " all the 
ease and grace and pleasant flow of Hume 
without his shallowness ; and all the depth and 
accuracy and thoroughness of Gibbon without 
his periodical swell and buskined gait," and 
earnestly advising him to take up some part 
of the history of his own country, or even of 
Massachusetts alone, for his next work. 

Prescott's most tempting offer of the sort 
came to him in 1848. It was a proposal that 
he should write the history of the second Con- 
quest of Mexico, — that by General Scott in 
1847. In his journal for July 25, 1848, he 
noted the receipt of a letter from Charles King 
of New York making the suggestion on behalf 



THE QUEST OF A THEME 83 

of General Scott, " offering me all his own 
papers, etc." But he declined. " The theme 
would be taking ; but I had rather not meddle 
with heroes who have not been underground 
two centuries at least." As he later wrote to 
Ticknor, " I belong to the sixteenth century, 
and am quite out of place when I sleep else- 
where." With rare fidelity to his resolution 
once made, or possibly with a more accurate 
measure of his own powers than his corre- 
spondents had, he refused to be drawn aside. 
Invitations to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa 
address at Harvard, or to read a paper before 
the National Institute at Washington, were 
declined. In self-imposed limitation the master 
displayed himself. 



CHAPTER VIII 

"FERDINAND AND ISABELLA" 

The task in hours of insight willed was ful- 
filled in years of unhasting, unresting toil. 
" Completed the corrections and arrangement," 
was the record in the diary of October 26, 
1836. " Thus ends the labor of ten years, for 
I have been occupied with it . . . since the 
summer of 1826." But publishing was still 
deferred. " Ferdinand and Isabella " appeared 
at Christmas, 1837, with the year 1838 on the 
title-page. Indeed, Prescott was almost indif- 
ferent to publishing at all. He seems to have 
been stung to it by a remark of his father's. 
" The man," said Judge Prescott, " who writes 
a book which he is afraid to publish is a cow- 
ard." That was a challenge to fighting blood. 
Thereafter let the presses beware. The histo- 
rian had before set down for his own eye 
another motive for publication. " It is a satis- 
factory evidence to my mind," was the entry 



FERDINAND AND ISABELLA 85 

of June 26, 1836, " of my moderate anticipa- 
tions . . . that I feel not only no desire but a 
reluctance to publish, and should probably keep 
it by me for emendations and additions at 
my leisure, were it not for the belief that the 
ground would be more or less occupied in the 
meantime by abler writers. I hear already of 
Southey's preparation for a history of the 
Spanish Arabs, and it warns me not to defer 
my own publication." 

Further citations from his reflections of the 
same date show how he fared through his long 
work, and how he profited by it. 

" Pursuing the work in this quiet, leisurely 
way, without over-exertion or fatigue, or any 
sense of obligation to complete it in a given 
time, I have found it a continual source of 
pleasure. It has furnished food for my medi- 
tations, has given a direction and object to my 
scattered reading, and supplied me with regular 
occupation for hours that would otherwise have 
filled me with ennui. I have found infinite 
variety in the study, moreover, which might at 
first sight seem monotonous. No historical 
labors, rightly conducted, can be monotonous, 



86 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

since they afford all the variety of pursuing a 
chain of facts to unforeseen consequences, of 
comparing doubtful and contradictory testi- 
mony, of picturesque delineations of incident, 
and of analysis and dramatic exhibition of 
character. The plain narrative may be some- 
times relieved by general views or critical dis- 
cussions, and the story and the actors, as they 
grow under the hands, acquire constantly addi- 
tional interest. It may seem dreary work to 
plod through barbarous old manuscript chron- 
icles of monks and pedants, but this takes up 
but a small portion of the time, and even here, 
read aloud to, as I have been, required such 
close attention as always made the time pass 
glibly. In short, although I have sometimes 
been obliged to whip myself up to the work, I 
have never fairly got into it without deriving 
pleasure from it, and I have most generally 
gone to it with pleasure, and left it with regret. 
" What do I expect from it, now it is done ? 
And may it not be all in vain and labor lost, 
after all ? My expectations are not such, if I 
know myself, as to expose me to any serious 
disappointment. I do not flatter myself with 



FERDINAND AND ISABELLA 87 

the idea that I have achieved anything very 
profound, or, on the other hand, that will be 
very popular. I know myself too well to sup- 
pose the former for a moment. I know the 
public too well, and the subject I have chosen, 
to expect the latter. But I have made a book 
illustrating an unexplored and important pe- 
riod, from authentic materials, obtained with 
much difficulty, and probably in the possession 
of no one library, public or private, in Europe. 
As a plain, veracious record of facts, the 
work, therefore, till some one else shall be 
found to make a better one, will fill up a gap 
in literature which, I should hope, would give 
it a permanent value, — a value founded on 
its utility, though bringing no great fame or 
gain to its author. 

" Come to the worst, and suppose the thing 
a dead failure, and the book born only to be 
damned. Still it will not be all in vain, since 
it has encouraged me in forming systematic 
habits of intellectual occupation, and proved 
to me that my greatest happiness is to be the 
result of such. It is no little matter to be pos- 
sessed of this conviction from experience." 



88 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

It had been no holiday task. At its end, 
Prescott breathed like a spent swimmer reach- 
ing shore : — 

" The discouragements under which I have 
labored have nearly determined me, more than 
once, to abandon the enterprise. ... I be- 
gan with teaching a reader to pronounce the 
Spanish so that I could comprehend him, and 
in this way went through several quartos, of 
which my reader himself understood no more 
than he did of the Chaldaic. ... I have been 
about seven years and a half. . . . Had I 
possessed the industrious habits of a Southey 
or Sparks ... I could have accomplished 
the work in much less time. But I was neither 
driven by necessity nor ambition to extra exer- 
tions, writing, as the old Fortiguerra says, — 

' Per f uggir ozio, 6 non per cercar gloria.' " 

The three stout volumes were published by 
the American Stationer's Company of Boston. 
The contract was practically at author's risk. 
A simultaneous London edition was desired by 
Prescott. But for a time his efforts to secure 
an English publisher yvere in vain. In that 



FERDINAND AND ISABELLA 89 

respect, the fate of " Ferdinand and Isabella " 
threatened to become another example for the 
encouragement of the rejected. Murray per- 
emptorily declined the work. Longman took 
time to look at it, but likewise refused in the 
end. Prescott was mortified and despairing. 
But his indefatigable friend, Colonel Aspin- 
wall, persisted, and finally made an arrangement 
with Bentley. The history was to be elegantly 
printed, " with engravings, vignettes, etc.," and 
profits were to be divided. Prescott's chagrin 
changed to joy, and he wrote to Ticknor : — 

" My object is now attained. I shall bring 
out the book in the form I desired, and under 
the most respectable auspices on both sides 
of the water, and in a way which must interest 
the publisher so deeply as to secure his exer- 
tions to circulate the work. My bark will be 
fairly launched, and if it should be doomed to 
encounter a spiteful puff or two of criticism, I 
trust it may weather it." 

While on the material side of " Ferdinand 
and Isabella," it will be of both personal and 
historical interest to give Prescott's own ac- 
count of the technical and pecuniary aspects of 



90 WILLIAM HICKL1NG PRESCOTT 

his publishing venture. The minute analysis 
which he made of the whole affair reveals a 
practical talent which few would suspect in 
him. Evidently, if he had not been a famous 
historian, he could have been a successful busi- 
ness man. Here is the proof : — 

" Remarks on the Printing and Publication op 
' Ferdinand and Isabella.' " 

" I will now [April 30, 1838] give an ac- 
count of my arrangements for the publication 
of my history. In the first place I had the 
manuscript printed here by Dickinson, four 
copies only, for myself. 

First part 831 pages Cost $187.84 

Second " 807 " & 16 pp. contents " 228.01 
Notes of last chapter & reprint P. I. 

Chap.l 40.25 

$456.10 
An expense I shall never incur again. 

The cost of the whole stands thus : 

Paid to Folsom, Wells and Thurston for 

plates, extra corrections included $2143.90 
" Andrews for one engraving . . 400. 

" Stone " two " . . . . 160. 

" Sibley " making index . . . 100. 

$2803.90 



FERDINAND AND ISABELLA 91 

If to these I add : 

Paid Flagg for portrait of Isabella for 

Andrews 40. 

" Dickinson for first printed copy . 456. 

Finally for cost Spanish books and MS. 1200. 



$4499.90 



"Of this, 11000 for Spanish works was 
defrayed by my father, so that I was out of 
pocket, by the expenses of publication $3500. 

" Remarks. I never regarded the cost of the 
affair, for I should not have selected such a 
topic with the idea of making money. But, as 
I have gained some experience ... I shall 
note a few hints for my future government." 
There follow pages of minute analysis, worthy 
a book publisher. " One cost I shall never 
count — i. e., reasonably speaking — the cost 
of original and authentic materials." " Such 
sort of works as I shall be likely hereafter to 
turn out — not works of great and various re- 
search." Penciled margin : " Perhaps I may. 
In which case I have cramped too close." 

" But, after all, although I note down these 
estimates that, in my future calculations and 
bargains I may have something to guide me 



92 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

with the slippery ' trade,' yet I trust I shall 
never make the profit the main object ; and 
never put my name to a work which I have 
not made as good as I can make it, coute que 
coute. 

" Well, now for the result in America and 
England thus far. My work appeared here on 
the 25 th of December, 1837. Its birth had 
been prepared for by the favorable opinions, 
en avarice, of the few friends who in its pro- 
gress through the press had seen it. It was 
corrected previously as to style, etc., by my 
friend Gardiner, who bestowed some weeks, 
and I may say months, on its careful revision, 
and who suggested many important alterations 
in the form. Simonds had previously suggested 
throwing the introductory ' Section 2 ' on Ara- 
gon into its present place, it first having occu- 
pied the place after Chapter III. The work 
was indef atigably corrected, and the references 
most elaborately and systematically prepared 
by Folsom. . . . 

" From the time of its appearance to the pre- 
sent date, it has been the subject of notices, 
more or less elaborate, in the principal re- 



FERDINAND AND ISABELLA 93 

views and periodicals of the country, and in the 
mass of criticism I have not met with one un- 
kind, or sarcastic, or censorious sentence ; and 
my critics have been of all sorts, from stiff 
conservatives to leveling loco-focos. Much of 
all this success is to be attributed to the influ- 
ence and exertions of personal friends, much 
to the beautiful dress and mechanical execu- 
tion of the book, — and much to the novelty, 
in our country, of a work of research in vari- 
ous foreign languages. The topics, too, though 
not connected with the times, have novelty 
and importance in them. Whatever is the 
cause, the book has found a degree of favor 
not dreamed of by me certainly, nor by its 
warmest friends. It will, I have reason to hope, 
secure me an honest fame, and — what never 
entered into my imagination in writing it — 
put, in the long run, some money in my 
pocket. 

" In Europe things wear also a very auspi- 
cious aspect so far. The weekly periodicals — 
the lesser lights of criticism — contain the 
most ample commendations on the book ; sev- 
eral of the articles being written with spirit 



94 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

and beauty. How extensively the trade winds 
may have helped me along, I cannot say. But 
so far the course has been smooth and rapid. 
Bentley speaks to my friends in extravagant 
terms of the book, and states that nearly half 
the edition, which was of seven hundred and fifty 
copies, had been sold by the end of March. In 
France, thanks to my friend Ticknor, it has 
been put into the hands of the principal savans 
in the Castilian. Copies have also been sent 
to some eminent scholars in Germany. Thus 
far, therefore, we run before the wind, and I 
may hope the book has got such headway in 
the good opinion of the public that should an 
ugly squall strike it from one of the John Bull 
reviews of larger growth, it may be able to 
weather it." 

" Well, for several days the binder was un- 
able to do his work fast enough, and the vol- 
umes were taken off as fast as they were 
delivered to the good-natured public. In short, 
three fifths of the edition of 500 copies were 
sold in Boston before a copy could be sent to 
New York. The whole edition was exhausted 
in five weeks. Since that another impression 



FERDINAND AND ISABELLA 95 

of 200 has been so rapidly disposed of that 
the market has been left bare, and has con- 
tinued bare till the last week, for now more 
than a month, to the serious detriment of my 
pocket. A new edition has appeared this 
week. . . . The book . . . will now be dis- 
tributed more extensively." 

May 23, 1838. " Before leaving Boston I 
concluded a bargain with Little and Brown — 
I agreed to sell them 1700 copies of the His- 
tory at $ 1.75 a copy. They are to have five 
years and a half to dispose of them ; there 
being about 400 copies remaining on hand, 
at the time of making the contract, of those 
bought of the Stationer's Company. By this 
bargain I receive $3000, in addition to the 
$1000 before received, within six years from 
the publication." 

It is no part of the writer's plan to under- 
take epitomes or appreciations of Preseott's 
books. That would be to fall into the one lit- 
erary fault which a modern reader might find 
in " Ferdinand and Isabella " — prolixity. Its 
style partook of the leisurely spirit of the 
author's day. Prescott was a " gentleman of 



96 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

letters," — as Theodore Parker called him, " a 
well-bred gentleman of letters," — and rapidity 
of movement was not then thought to go well 
with the grand manner. Seldom does one en- 
counter an absolutely stilted passage in " Fer- 
dinand and Isabella," but elegance of diction 
frequently becomes oppressive ; and elaborate 
comparisons — such as that of Isabella with 
Queen Elizabeth — are pushed with a dire 
thoroughness upon which no writer would 
to-day venture. Yet the narrative bears re-read- 
ing wonderfully well, of so sustained an inter- 
est is it, so high-bred is the spirit which ani- 
mates it, so sound and wide the scholarship. 
Theodore Parker, with his habit of brandishing 
" the whole tree of knowledge torn up by the 
roots," had a searching review of " Ferdinand 
and Isabella " in the " Massachusetts Quar- 
terly " (II, p. 215), yet he did not impugn Pres- 
cott's learning. A later critic, Mr. Justin Win- 
sor, made the somewhat ill-natured remark that 
Prescott thought of " composing history to be 
read as a pastime, rather than as of a study 
of completed truth." But the only specifica- 
tions made are not happy. Look, said Mr. 



FERDINAND AND ISABELLA 97 

Winsor, at Prescott's absurd contention that 
it is difficult to find " a single blemish " in the 
moral character of Columbus. This is harshly 
characterized as " flagrant disregard of the 
truth." Yet, as a matter of fact, no one has 
more clearly pointed out Columbus's " blem- 
ishes " — he uses the very word — than Pres- 
cott. He was so explicit about them that he 
felt compelled to put in the disclaimer, "I 
trust these remarks will not be construed into 
an insensibility to the merits and exalted ser- 
vices of Columbus " (II, p. 481). And as for 
Mr. Winsor's charge that Prescott was ready 
to " disguise the truth " in the interest of 
" hero-worship," what better refutation could 
there be than the historian's frankness con- 
cerning his real hero, Gonsalvo de Cordoba ? 
It was in summing up the character of that 
extraordinary man that Prescott wrote : " His- 
tory has no warrant to tamper with right and 
wrong, or to brighten the character of its 
favorites by diminishing one shade of the ab- 
horrence which attaches to their vices." Pres- 
cott's love of truth was a part of his thorough- 
ness. On his death it was said of him by one 



98 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

most competent to speak, Jared Sparks, " I 
know of no historian, in any age or language, 
whose researches into the materials with which 
he was to work have been so extensive, thor- 
ough, and" profound as those of Mr. Prescott." 
This it was that won for " Ferdinand and Isa- 
bella " the instant recognition of scholars the 
world over. Nor can that be taken as the fond 
exaggeration of an outgrown erudition. Thirty- 
six years later, the most scholarly review of 
America, calling up Prescott for readjudica- 
tion, apropos of a new edition of his works, 
said that " notwithstanding the great advance 
of historical science, his works well maintain 
their high rank and reputation." Their author 
" knew all that was to be known upon the sub- 
ject which he selected to write upon. . . . His 
writings . . . may well count upon a perma- 
nent rank in historical literature. . . . He is 
no Thucydides, or Gibbon, or Mommsen, or 
Ranke ; but, giving all credit to the historians 
who have done honor to our literature since 
his day, it is not too much to say that he still 
stands at the head." (" The Nation," XVIII, 
pp. 252, 253.) 



CHAPTER IX 

AWAKING FAMOUS 

" Love of the author gave the first impetus. 
The extraordinary merits of the work did all 
the rest." So wrote Prescott's friend and con- 
fidant, Gardiner, in accounting for the bril- 
liant bookselling success won by " Ferdinand 
and Isabella." No work of serious scholarship 
had ever been in such demand in America. 
No American historian had before attained 
such acclaim from the judicious in Europe. 
As Gardiner said, the fame of the author be- 
gan in Boston, where he had been chiefly 
known as a social favorite. His personal pop- 
ularity was unbounded, though his literary 
labors had been known to but a few of his 
intimate friends. Ticknor believed that not 
more than two persons outside the Prescott 
family were aware that he was writing " Fer- 
dinand and Isabella " until it was nearly com- 
pleted. The journal early betrayed the secre- 

rLofC. 



100 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

tive habit. "Nor shall any one else if I can 
help it, know that I am writing." Hence it 
could happen that even a near relative, whom 
he was in the habit of meeting weekly, once 
urged him to undertake some serious pursuit, 
as a means both of happiness and social re- 
pute ! At the moment he had spent eight 
years on his first great work. One is reminded 
of the nurse who thought Darwin's health 
would be better if he only had something to 
occupy his mind. All the greater, however, 
the stir in Prescott's circle when the book 
finally came out. Its appearance was a society 
"event." There was a rush to secure early 
copies. " A convivial friend," writes Gardi- 
ner, " who was far from being a man of let- 
ters, — indeed, a person who rarely read a 
book, — got up early in the morning and went 
to wait for the opening of the publisher's 
shop, so as to secure the first copy." The 
work became the fashionable Christmas pre- 
sent of the season. Such a thing it was, as 
Prescott wrote, to have the advantage of the 
" exertions of those whom I have thought and 
now find to be friends." 



AWAKING FAMOUS 101 

By all this sudden blaze of popularity and 
even fame the author's head was not turned. 
Prescott was, in fact, always singularly well 
poised in the matter of praise. He valued it ; 
he was pleased by it ; but he never allowed it 
to make him forget his own standards. His 
letter to his friend Ticknor, ten days after 
"Ferdinand and Isabella" was published, 
shows how he took success, as he would un- 
doubtedly have taken failure, with a quiet 
mind: — 

" Their Catholic Highnesses have just been 
ushered into the world in three royal octavos. 
The bantling appeared on a Christmas morn- 
ing, and certainly has not fallen still-born, but 
is alive and kicking merrily. How long its 
life may last is another question. Within the 
first ten days half the first edition of five hun- 
dred copies (for the publishers were afraid to 
risk a larger one for our market) has been dis- 
posed of, and they are now making prepara- 
tions for a second edition, having bought of 
me twelve hundred and fifty copies. The sale, 
indeed, seems quite ridiculous, and 1 fancy 
many a poor soul thinks so by this time. . . . 



102 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

In the mean time the small journals have 
opened quite a cry in my favor, and while one 
of yesterday claims me as a Bostonian, a Salem 
\ paper asserts that distinguished honor for the 

witch-town. So you see I am experiencing the 
fate of the Great Obscure, even in my own 
lifetime. And a clergyman told me yesterday, 
he intended to make my case — the obstacles 
I have encountered and overcome — the sub- 
ject of a sermon. I told him it would help to 
sell the book at all events. 

" ' Poor fellow ! ' — I hear you exclaim by 
this time, — ' his wits are actually turned by 
this flurry in his native village, — the Yankee 
Athens ! ' Not a whit, I assure you. Am I 
not writing to two dear friends, to whom I can 
talk as freely and foolishly as to one of my 
own household, and who, I am sure, will not 
misunderstand me ? The effect of all this — 
which a boy at Dr. Gardiner's school, I re- 
member, called fungum popularitatem — has 
been rather to depress me, and S was say- 
ing yesterday, that she had never known me so 
out of spirits as since the book has come out. 
The truth is, I appreciate, more than my 



AWAKING FAMOUS 103 

critics can do, the difficulty of doing justice to 
my subject, and the immeasurable distance be- 
tween me and the models with which they have 
been pleased to compare me. ... A favor- 
able notice in a Parisian journal of respecta- 
bility would be worth a good deal. But, after 
all, my market and my reputation rest princi- 
pally with England, and if your influence can 
secure me, not a friendly, but a fair notice 
there, in any of the three or four leading jour- 
nals, it would be the best thing you ever did 
for me, — and that is no small thing to say. 
But I am asking what you will do without 
asking, if any foreigner could hope to have 
such influence. I know that the fiat of criti- 
cism now-a-days depends quite as much on the 
temper and character of the reviewer as the 
reviewed, and, in a work filled with facts dug 
out of barbarous and obsolete idioms, it will 
be easy to pick flaws and serve them up as 
a sample of the whole. But I will spare you 
further twaddle about their Catholic High- 
nesses." 

An entry in the journal of December 25, 
1838, — one year after the publication of 



104 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

"Ferdinand and Isabella," — reveals the his- 
torian's sanity as well as could pages : — 

" Dr. Channing (the Dr. that preaches, not 
he that practises J said last evening * It [" Fer- 
dinand and Isabella"] has been received by 
acclamation.' Yet I am not such an ass as not 
to know that fires which blaze up the quickest 
are soonest out. But if I be an ass of an histo- 
rian, the public are greater asses to have en- 
dorsed me — that 's some comfort." 

European recognition came swift and full. 
This was naturally more gratifying to Prescott 
than the acclamation of personal friends, or 
acknowledgments possibly dictated by patri- 
otic prejudice. As the historian privately 
noted at a later date : " These tributes from 
another quarter of the world, without the bias 
of national partiality, come like the voice of 
posterity, not to be bribed or bought." Many 
details are given by Ticknor of the immediate 
admission of Prescott to the company of Euro- 
pean scholars. The English reviews gave their 
prompt applause. Hallam, Milman, Ford were 
enthusiastic. Nor were continental savants 
backward in offering their suffrages. By 



AWAKING FAMOUS 105 

printed review and private letters — the latter 
leading in some cases to friendly correspond- 
ence long sustained — they hailed Prescott as 
an equal in learning. The Comte de Cir- 
court, Sismondi, Tocqueville, Humboldt (later), 
Thierry, pressed forward with their compliments. 
Learned societies showered their membership 
upon him. The total of these, American and 
foreign, is, as I reckon from the somewhat 
confused data accessible, thirty-three. In his 
private note on two of them, — the Royal 
Society of Literature, London, and the Eng- 
lish Society of Antiquaries, Prescott wrote: 
"The first I share with Bancroft — the last 
with no other Yankee." 

To round out this account of Prescott's 
European fame, may be conveniently grouped 
here letters which came in the course of sev- 
eral years after "Ferdinand and Isabella." 
They are additional to those printed by Tick- 
nor. Let this from Hallam lead off : — 

Wimpole Street, London, 
June 1, 1838. 

Dear Sir, — I avail myself of the return 

of our acquaintance, Mr. Ticknor, to America, 



106 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

a circumstance which in itself I regret, to 
thank you for the very obliging present I re- 
ceived through his hands of your valuable 
history of " Ferdinand and Isabella." It does 
much honour to your research, taste, and judg- 
ment, and reflects credit on the literature of 
your native country. The period of history is 
so important and interesting that I expect 
your work to acquire by degrees a classical 
reputation. It is well spoken of by those who 
have read it here, but a book published in a 
foreign country, though there may be an Eng- 
lish edition of it, does not make its way very 
rapidly. 

I am glad to hear from Mr. Ticknor that 
your eyesight is so much restored as to give 
us hope of fresh labors in the vineyard of 
letters. 

Believe me, Dear Sir, 
Your much obliged and faithful servant, 

Henry Hallam. 

" This," noted Prescott, " is gratifying 
enough from one at the head of the craft, and 
a writer whom Sir J. Mackintosh notices as 



AWAKING FAMOUS 107 

singularly parsimonious of his commendation. 
Gibbon says in his Memoirs, ; A letter from 
Mr. Hume overpaid the labors of ten years.' 
Without such extravagance, I may truly say, 
no letter that I ever received in reference to 
my writings has given me more satisfaction. 
It is one of the rewards of the scholar, and no 
mean one." 

Prescott's intimacy with Sumner will be 
dwelt on in another connection. When abroad 
in 1839, the latter acted as a kind of purveyor 
of praise to his friend Prescott, by means of 
letters to George S. Hillard. 

For example : — 

December 25, 1838. 

I believe I mentioned to you that Mr. 
Elphinstone praised Prescott's work extrava- 
gantly. He is called the cleverest man in Eng- 
land, and has twice refused the Governor- 
Generalship of India. He is a delightful 
person. 

January 6, 1839. 

You will read the article on Prescott in the 
" Edinburgh." It is written by somebody who 



108 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

understands the subject, and who praises with 
great discrimination. Some of my friends sup- 
pose it was done by John Allen, the friend of 
Lord Holland. Mr. Hallam, however, thought 
it was not by him but by a Spaniard who is in 
England. I shall undoubtedly be able to let 
you know by my next letter. Mr. Ford, the 
writer of the Spanish articles in the " Quar- 
terly," has undertaken to review Prescott 's 
book for that journal. Whether his article will 
be ready for the next number I cannot tell. 
Prescott ought to be happy in his honorable 
fame. I do not go anywhere that I do not hear 
him spoken of. His publisher, Bentley, is 
about to publish a second edition in two vol- 
umes, and he told me that he regarded the 
work as the most important he had ever pub- 
lished, and as one which would carry his 
humble name to posterity. Think of Bentley 
astride of the shoulders of Prescott on the 
journey to posterity ! Milman told me that he 
thought it the greatest work that had yet pro- 
ceeded from America. Mr. Wishaw, who is 
now blind and who was the bosom friend of 
Sir Samuel Eomilly, has had it read to him, 



AWAKING FAMOUS 109 

and says that Lord Holland calls it the most 
important historical work since Gibbon. I 
have heard Hallam speak of it repeatedly, and 
Harness and Rogers and a great many others 
I might mention if I had more time and I 
thought you had more patience. 

In a letter of Sumner's to Dr. Palfrey in 
Cambridge, we read : — 

" Prescott has by one step taken his place 
at the head of American literature. He has 
had the best kind of success. His work has 
been read by all the best educated people in 
England. I have seen it in the halls of the 
nobility and on the tables and shelves of liter- 
ary men. His name is already known as Rob- 
ertson's and Hallam's. I think no historical 
work has ever so soon succeeded in England 
before." 

Prescott comments on the above in his jour- 
nal: — 

" With the most liberal allowance for the 
obvious — though, of course, unintentional — 
over-statement, there remains enough to show 
that the work has been received with a degree 



110 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

of favor by the British public which I cer- 
tainly neither did nor could have had any right 
to anticipate." 

Miss Edgeworth early conceived a great 
admiration for Prescott. She wrote to Mrs. 
Ticknor : — 

August 23, 1844. 

. . . Prescott's " History of Mexico " — I 
am charmed with it; so much so that after 
having read it to myself when I was recovering 
from illness, I begged to hear it read over 
again as soon as I had finished it, that I might 
reenjoy the pleasure and the super-added of 
the effect on all my family. 

Under date of September 20, 1844, Mr. 
W. B. Sprague sends to Prescott an extract 
from a letter he had just received from Maria 
Edgeworth : — 

" I have said nothing of the books we have 
been reading — I should have told you that we 
have been reading Prescott's c Conquest of 
Mexico,' — the most interesting booh I have 
seen this century" 

A later letter came direct : — 



AWAKING FAMOUS 111 

Edgeworths Town, August 25, 1845. 

With feelings of the greatest respect and 
admiration for Mr. Prescott's talents and char- 
acter I take the liberty of writing to him 
though I am personally a stranger. 

I inclose to him a catalogue and account of 
a series of Spanish pictures, the subjects taken 
from the Mexican Conquest. The pictures are 
now in the possession of Mr. Cholmley, a 
Yorkshire gentleman, who is proud of them as 
curiosities, but knows nothing about them, and 
having no literary taste, has made no inquiry 
and does not care to make any: but would 
have no objection, his friends think, to having 
them shown, or to have copies or engravings 
taken from them. The account inclosed was 
partly quoted from Robertson, partly written 
by a lady who, at the request of a friend of 
ours, made inquiries about these pictures for 
me. Though you must [be] better acquainted 
than she or we are with all Robertson says, 
yet I send the extracts she has made from 
him, as they will bring all the subject to- 
gether before your eye. The extracts from 
Robertson are marked with quotation — the 



112 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

lady's own notes are not marked as quotar 
tions. 

I inclose (to save myself the time of copy- 
ing, as I am much hurried at this moment) 
some scraps of notes which contain all the 
little information we have been able to col- 
lect about these pictures and the manner in 
which they came into Mr. Cholmley's posses- 
sion. 

I have a recollection of your mentioning in 
your history of the " Conquest of Mexico " the 
capture of a ship carrying over pictures among 
other valuables of Europe — either to Spain 
or France — but I have looked for the passage 
in vain. 

Dear Mr. Prescott, I am afraid that I am 
taking up your most valuable time with what 
may not be interesting or intelligible to you 
from the imperfect information I send. But 
you will, I am sure, from your amiable temper 
(with which I am, from our dear friends the 
Ticknors, perfectly acquainted) give me credit 
for my motive — and believe in my sincere 
wish to do anything in my power to oblige you 
or to give you the least pleasure in return for 



AWAKING FAMOUS 113 

the great quantity of delightful pleasure and 
information you have given me. 
Believe me, dear Mr. Prescott, 

Your obliged and grateful, 

Maria Edgeworth. 

After this place aux dames, and in order to 
end the chapter with masculine learning — 
Teuton at that — take this from Von Eau- 
mer : — 

u You have, despite the trouble with your 
eyes, finished three masterpieces. . . . 

" Baron Humboldt, whose mind remains ever 
fresh and youthful, sends you his greetings, as 
do many other ladies and gentlemen unknown 
to you." 

This was the same man of whom Prescott 
wrote in his journal, September 15, 1844 : — 

" Dragged to town two days since to see 
Von Raumer. Neither Von nor Don shall start 
me again." 



CHAPTEE X 

THE MAN OF LETTERS 

Richard Ford's review of "Ferdinand and 
Isabella " in the " Quarterly " contained a little 
playful sarcasm at the expense of Prescott's 
style. This, wrote Sir William Stirling, in his 
article in " Fraser " entitled " In Memoriam," 
"Prescott confessed to us that he did not 
much like." He had not forgotten to scruti- 
nize his own style, — witness the entry in his 
diary : — 

February 13, 1830. "Mem, Two or three 
faults of style occur to me on looking over 
some former compositions — too many adjec- 
tives; too many couplets of substantives as 
well as of adjectives and perhaps of verbs ; too 
set sentences too much in the same mould; 
too many precise emphatic pronouns, as these, 
those, which, etc., instead of the particles the, 
a, etc. ; occasionally unnecessary expletives ; 
moral or practical reflections introduced too 



THE MAN OF LETTERS 115 

ceremoniously instead of incidentally ; no other 
defects occur to me at present, and I cannot 
charge myself with what I most fear — timid- 
ity." 

Again, in his journal, the historian showed 
how sweet may be the uses of criticism : — 

August 4, 1839. "Have been led by the 
strictures in the ' Quarterly ' to review the style 
of my 4 History,' as I shall always make it a 
point to draw all the benefit I can from critiques 
on my writings. ... I have devoted several 
days to a careful scrutiny of my defects, and to 
a comparison of my style with that of standard 
English writers of the present time. Master 
Ford complains, etc. . . . One more conclusion 
is — that I will not hereafter vex myself with 
anxious thoughts about my style when compos- 
ing. It is formed." 

Nothing could be more characteristic than 
the foregoing extract. Prescott's anxious de- 
sire to perfect his work and to profit by every 
honest criticism ; his thoroughness of self- 
judgment by the highest standards, and, when 
all was done, the poised serenity of his spirit 
in putting away forever a care with which it 



116 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

was vain to vex himself longer — these things 
are of the very essence of the man. His lofty 
ideals as a writer find frequent reflection in his 
private records : — 

" On the whole, there is service, and know- 
ledge and improvement gained by pondering 
deeply the masterpieces — few, very few — of 
literature [he had been reading Shakespeare] 
instead of diffusing one's self over the whole 
surface of second and third rate productions. 
Hereafter I will propose a few such to myself, 
and endeavor to become more and more inti- 
mate with them." 

" Of one thing I am persuaded. No motives 
but those of an honest fame and of usefulness 
will ever be of much weight with me in stimu- 
lating my labors. I never shall be satisfied to 
do my work slovenly or superficially. It would 
be impossible for me to do the job-work of a 
literary hack. Fortunately, I am not driven to 
write for bread ; and I never will write for 
money." 

On the fly-leaf of Volume X of his " Liter- 
ary Memoranda " stands this motto from Cicero 
— " Scribendi autem me non tarn fructus, et 



THE MAN OF LETTERS 117 

gloria, quam studium ipsum, exercitatioque de- 
lectat ; — quod mihi nulla res eripiet." 

No writer ever wrought more faithfully ii\ 
that spirit. 

Prescott gave himself secret warnings : — 

April 1, 1841. " Never shrink from telling 
the truth. If I am retained by the Spaniards, 
I shall lose my reputation with every other 
people. I spoke fearlessly in ' Ferdinand and 
Isabella.' Do so now." 

At the head of the first page of the eleventh 

volume of his journal, under date February 17, 

1842, stands the following couplet : — 

" For sluggard's brow the laurel never grows. 
Renown is not the child of indolent repose." 

Immediately after came this : — 

February 17, 1842. "I consume too much 
time on notes and on pettinesses every way. 
Think more of general effect and impression. 
Don't quiddle nor twaddle." 

Once more : — 

July 28, 1849. " After all, regular composi- 
tion of a great historic work is the best recipe 
for happiness — for me." 

But Prescott had others to think of. In his 



118 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

representative capacity he had a large corre- 
spondence with foreigners. " I can't write a 
short letter, though it were on my deathbed." 
This was his explanation of the entry of No- 
vember 15, 1842 : " I send eight long letters 
to Europe to-morrow." Turning to his Record 
of Correspondence, which he kept for years 
with methodical exactness, we may find to whom 
those eight letters were sent and what they 
were about : — 

Mr. Edward Everett — Inclosing letters to 

Italy. Asking about publisher. 
Don Neri Corsini — Thanking him. Ask- 
ing leave for Mr. Green to ins. 
Marquis Capponi — Thanking for present — 

Remarks on F. & I. trans. 
Mr. G. W. Green — Suggesting to call on 

Corsini. 
Mr. Tytler — Thanking for his history. His 

offer of MSS. 
Mr. Gayangos — Philip II — In Paris to 

mem. Granville. 
Mr. Dickens — Thanking him for his book. 

He to define terms for Mad? C. 



THE MAN OF LETTERS 119 

Senor Corderera — Advising of remittance. 
Ordering Phil, of Ec. & Coluin. 

In his later life, Prescott hospitably enter- 
tained the literary stranger within our gates. 
Many noted foreigners turned their steps to 
his home on Beacon Street. It was there that 
J. G. Kohl, the German geographer, saw 
him. This was the impression recorded : " I 
met but few Americans so distinguished by 
elegance and politeness ; and when I first met 
him, and before knowing his name, I took him 
for a diplomatist. He had not the slightest 
trace of the dust of books and learning. . . . 
He was at that time past his 60th year and yet 
his delicate, nobly chiseled face possessed such 
a youthful charm that he could fascinate young 
ladies." 

One young lady, a kinswoman, was perhaps 
the first to make Prescott pay that bitter-sweet 
penalty of literary fame — to become the in- 
voluntary confidant and adviser of aspiring 
brothers or sisters of the craft. The letter 
which he received from Captain Henry Pres- 
cott, of St. Johns, in 1840, was accompanied by 



120 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

a volume of poems from the pen of the writer's 
daughter. That authoress later wrote him this 
note : — 

My dear Sir, — I cannot resist giving 
myself the pleasure of thanking you, in my 
own person, for the gift of your valuable work, 
which will indeed, as long as I live, have an 
honored place in my library. As a woman, I 
am bound to be grateful to you for the justice 
you have done to the character of one of the 
noblest of my sex ; and as a Prescott I am 
truly proud of the fame, which I trust you will 
long live to enjoy. . . . 

Henrietta Prescott. 
St. Johns, March 12, 1841. 

But this was nothing to what was to come. 
On March 27, 1841, the following letter was 
addressed to him from Wakefield, England : — 

Sir, — The perusal of your admirable " His- 
tory of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella 
the Catholic," has suggested the composition 
of the enclosed little drama entitled " The 
Siege of Granada." As I have printed but a 
very limited number of copies, a new edition 



THE MAN OF LETTERS 121 

is not improbable ; would you allow me to 
dedicate my next, and, I trust, more corrected 
edition, to yourself ? 

I am, sir, with all respect, 
Your M. O. S., 

Wm. Henry Leatham. 

What answer Prescott gave the poet may 
be inferred from this fragment of a letter two 
years later : — 

February 11, 1843. 

... As you kindly expressed yourself pleased 

with my little poetical performance, I have 

inclosed for your acceptance a complete set of 

my poems. 

Wm. H. Leatham. 

But the historian was far from through 
with this insistent bard. Every history fatally 
inspired a poem. The " Conquest of Mexico" 
led Mr. Leatham to indite some verses on 
Montezuma. Of these he wrote, on October 
10, 1844, proposing to print this poem, to- 
gether with his drama, " The Siege of Gra- 
nada," in a little book to be dedicated to 
Prescott, and asks, "Do you think it would 



122 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

command any sale in America?" In his 
poem he says, describing the ancient " unholy 
rites," — 

" And human gore was seen to pour like water in the 
sun." 

The youth chosen for sacrifice had his fill 
of color, and enjoyment, and sweet-smelling 
flowers — 

" Till that day year the bloody bier will snatch him 
from their bowers." 

When Montezuma at last comes to die — 

" He speaks no more but bows his head, his eyeballs 

cease to roll. 
His race is run and with the sun has passed the mon- 
arch's soul. 
Soon as the awe-struck Mexicans had heard their king 

was dead, 
A distant wail rose on the gale, and through the city 

spread. 
But short their grief ; each warrior-chief by Cuitla- 

huac led, 
In wrath arose to smite his foes, if not already fled — 
Their sullen tramp has reached the camp where 

Cortez vainly strives. 
The Spaniard from the wave-girt wall the gallant 

Aztec drives ; 



THE MAN OF LETTERS 123 

Till morning breaks o'er reedy lakes throughout the 

dismal night, 
The swarthy sons of Mexico prolong the bloody fight, 
And for his cursed stratagem the General dearly paid, 
For vainly did he wield his lance and keen Toledo 

blade ! " 



Another persistent English correspondent 
of Prescott's was Dr. S. A. Dunham. An ex- 
posure of this gentleman's ignorance in a foot- 
note of " Ferdinand and Isabella " seemed to 
establish a hen upon Prescott's time and kind- 
ness. He promptly wrote to ask what were the 
chances of his obtaining a livelihood in the 
United States. Prescott apparently gave him 
some Greeleyesque advice. At any rate, Dr. 
Dunham quickly rejoined with a round dozen 
of questions, one of which was, u To what por- 
tion of the far West do you allude?" The 
farther west the better, one might think Pres- 
cott would have been tempted to reply to a 
man who seemed to think that one considerate 
word implied an undertaking to care for him 
and his family forever after. What Prescott 
did reply is of value not only as illustrating 
his own admirable temper, but as throwing 



124 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

an instructive light upon the nature of the 
struggle for existence of the American man 
of letters at the time. 

TO DR. DUNHAM 

Boston, Jtanuary 30, 1844. 

My dear Sir, — I am extremely con- 
cerned to learn that the cloud still hangs so 
darkly over your prospects, now that you are 
again on your native soil. I was in hopes that, 
once more among your friends, and in a coun- 
try where men of letters are sufficiently nu- 
merous to make a distinct and important class, 
your just claims would be recognized. It is 
impossible for a foreigner, like myself, to judge 
of the expediency of the plans you suggest for 
the future maintenance of your family. And 
I am grieved to be obliged to say that I think 
it would be in vain to look for a contribution 
towards it here. There are so many projects 
that appeal so directly to those most liberally 
disposed in our community that their resources 
seem to be preoccupied. 

With respect of contributions to the news- 
papers, I fear there will be as little chance of 



THE MAN OF LETTERS 125 

success in that quarter. You might indeed 
furnish articles on literary matters to a respec- 
table journal like our " North American." 
But the compensation is too inconsiderable to 
furnish an inducement ; since it is only a dol- 
lar a printed page. I have known this journal 
to give two dollars a page to a popular writer 
who would contract for a certain amount of 
pages per annum. I know not whether this is 
ever done by the present editor. Should you 
send anything to me for that Journal I shall 
have much pleasure in handing it to the Editor 
and ascertaining whether he would be inclined 
to make an engagement with you for the fu- 
ture. Our newspapers do not press often into 
their service writers who have drunk deep of 
the good wells of learning, and a penny-a-line 
manufacturer of casualties will find more en- 
couragement with most of them than a man of 
learning. I have suggested it to one of our 
most respectable editors but he has given me 
no encouragement. 

W. H. Prescott. 

Miss L. I. Lincolne, " a perfect stranger " 



126 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

to him, — and otherwise not too perfect to be 
a sly young autograph hunter, — wrote him 
from Norwich, March 25, 1856, a rather gush- 
ing letter saying how very much she had en- 
joyed the two volumes of " Philip II " and 
representing herself in a state of frantic impa- 
tience to hear the rest of the story — what 
was the fate of the Prince of Orange, etc., — • 
and begging him to hurry up with the rest of 
the work. Prescott answered her letter kindly ; 
for she writes again (May 15, 1856) thank- 
ing him effusively and saying that his letter 
is " carefully treasured," while not forgetting 
to ask some questions as bait for a second 
letter. 

Even Prescott' s patience broke down before 
one appeal that came to him. In August of 
1858 Senor Don Pedro Felix Vicuna of Val- 
paraiso sent him a long and flowery letter. 
After a glowing tribute to the country of Wash- 
ington and Jefferson, he proceeded to request 
that Prescott would write a public letter, 
throwing his influence upon the right side, in 
order to calm the political tumults of Chili. 
Seiior Vicuna adds that he has forwarded a 



THE MAN OF LETTERS 127 

little " production of his own " which appar- 
ently he desired Prescott to aid him in pub- 
lishing. This letter bore the unexampled in- 
dorsement, " No answer." A letter to and 
from George Bancroft may fitly close this 
chapter. Bancroft had reviewed " Ferdinand 
and Isabella " in the " Democratic Review," 
and Prescott wrote in acknowledgment : — 

Saturday, p. m. (indorsed May 5, 1838). 

Dear Bancroft, — I return the review 
with my hearty thanks. I think it is one of 
the most delightful tributes ever paid by friend- 
ship to authorship. And I think it is writ- 
ten in your very happiest manner. I do not 
believe, in estimating it so, I am misled by 
the subject, or the writer, for I have not been 
very easy to please on the score of puffs, of 
which I have had full measure, you know, from 
my good-natured friends. But the style of the 
piece is gorgeous, without being overloaded, 
and the tone of sentiment most original, with- 
out the least approach to extravagance or 
obscurity. Indeed, the originality of the 
thoughts and the topics touched on constitute 



128 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

its great charm, and make the article even at 
this eleventh hour, when so much has been 
said on the subject, have all the freshness of 
novelty. In this, I confess, considering how 
long it had been kept on the shelf, I am most 
agreeably disappointed. As to the length, it 
is, taken in connection with the sort of cri- 
tique, just the thing. It will terrify none from 
venturing on it, and I am sure a man must be 
without relish for the beautiful, who can lay it 
down without finishing. 

Faithfully yours, 

Wm. H. Prescott. 

P. S. There is one thing which I had like 
to have forgotten, but which I shall not for- 
give. You have the effrontery to speak of my 
having passed the prime of life, some dozen 
years ago. Why, my youthful friend, do you 
know what the prime of life is ? Moliere shall 
tell you : — 

" He bien ! qu'est ce que cela, soixante ans ? 
C'est le fleur de l'age cela." Prime of life, in- 
deed ! People will think the author is turned 
of seventy. He was a more discreet critic that 
called me " young and modest ! " 



THE MAN OF LETTERS 129 

Five years later, when the " Conquest of 
Mexico " was published, Bancroft wrote to the 
author : — 

My dear Prescott, — Thanks for your 
beautiful volumes, which I have read with ad- 
miration and delight. You handle your subject 
like one inspired with it. The fervor glows 
everywhere. After finishing the second volume, 
I took down Eobertson : shall I confess with 
some anxiety? On comparing the thrilling 
scenes, I think your account as correctly ex- 
pressed in point of style, more vivid, more 
dramatic, and with a better development of 
causes. Till I read, I had some uncertainty 
about popularity ; I have no doubt now. Your 
volumes will be among the most widely read in 
the English language. 

That you may see what the locofocos think, 
I mean the sound ones, not such Tylerites as 
we have in this city, I send you Bryant's 
Criticism, only adding I made up my mind 
last night and got Bryant's this morning. 
Yours ajways, 

G. Bancroft. 

December, 1843. 



CHAPTEE XI 

THE "CONQUEST OF MEXICO" 

Prescott's second historical work — at once 
his most praised and most belittled — was a 
natural sequence of his first. Indeed, in " Fer- 
dinand and Isabella " itself there is a sort of 
unconscious premonition of what was to fol- 
low, — the reference, at the end of the second 
volume, to that " young adventurer who was 
destined, by the conquest of Mexico, to realize 
all the magnificent visions, which had been 
derided as only visions, in the lifetime of Co- 
lumbus." Yet it was long before the historian 
found his subject. 

" This [' Ferdinand and Isabella '] is prob- 
ably," he set down in his diary, under date of 
March 10, 1833, "the only civil history I 
shall ever attempt." He did not mean to ex- 
clude literary history, to which his thoughts at 
first reverted after the completion and publica- 
tion of " Their Catholic Majesties," as he was 



THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 131 

fond of calling his book. It had been an old 
bent of his. When halfway through "Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella " he recorded : " But, after 
all, literary history is more consonant with my 
taste, my turn of mind, and all my previous 
studies. The sooner I complete my present 
work, the sooner I shall be enabled to enter 
upon it." 

He now proposed to write a life of Moliere, 
on whom he had, in 1828, done an article in 
the " North American Review." As usual, he 
set about drenching himself in material. He 
ordered every attainable authority and aid from 
Paris. But a wiser purpose slowly asserted it- 
self, and we find in the journal of May 27, 
1838: — 

" Before they [materials for projected Mo- 
liere] arrived, however, the favor shown to the 
4 History of Ferdinand and Isabella ' encour- 
aged me to go on with another subject which 
seemed to be a natural continuation of the 
last, which had the superior advantage of re- 
lating to my own quarter of the globe, and for 
which I now possessed eminent advantages 
for procuring original unpublished materials 



132 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

from Spain. ... I have since — the last week 
in April — forwarded letters to different savans 
in Madrid, with a letter of credit on the Bar- 
ings for 300 pounds, ... in order to procure 
such curious, original, and authentic documents 
as may throw light on the discovery and con- 
quest of Mexico and Peru. . . . Should I suc- 
ceed in my present collection, who knows what 
facilities I may find for making one relative to 
Philip II ds reign ? — a fruitful theme." 

Prescott made it his first business to secure 
every printed work extant that bore on his 
subject, and as many copies of manuscripts 
as possible. " Your manuscripts," he noted, 
" is the only staple for the historic web — at 
least the only one to make the stuff which 
will stand the wear and tear of old Father 
Time." 

Fortunately his purse did not lay an em- 
bargo on his scholar's instinct. He was able 
to purchase even such works as Lord Kings- 
borough's sumptuous volumes on Mexican An- 
tiquities. "As I could not borrow, it was 
necessary to buy his Lordship's mammoth 
work — the hard necessity of a country with- 



THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 133 

out libraries." Friends and scholars abroad 
aided him in his collections until at last even 
he was satisfied, and could write : — 

" The doubt as to the acquisition of the 
materials essential to the success of my under- 
taking is dispelled ; and these materials, safe 
from all the perils of land and water, are now 
on my own shelves." 

A preliminary difficulty remained. He 
learned through Mr. Cogswell of the Astor 
Library that Irving had begun to write on 
the Conquest of Mexico. There followed as 
generous an act of literary abnegation as could 
be cited. Irving promptly and handsomely 
yielded the field to Prescott. The correspond- 
ence between the two, at that time not per- 
sonally acquainted, is given by Ticknor and by 
Pierre Irving in the biography of his uncle. 
It is probable that Prescott did not fully 
realize what it cost Irving to abandon the 
project. The grace of the surrender hid its 
bitterness. 

But the nephew has recorded the " fit of 
vexation " in which Irving destroyed what he 
had already written, and George Sumner wrote 



134 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

to his brother Charles from Malaga, Novem- 
ber 19, 1843 : — 

" It is delightful to hear the tones of admi- 
ration in which Irving always speaks of Pres- 
cott, although the abandonment of the ' Con- 
quest of Mexico' which he had commenced 
cost him a pang ! His steam was just fairly 
up when he heard that Prescott was at work 
upon the same subject. For a week after 
he abandoned it he felt like a fish out of 
water and took to planting cabbages most 
desperately." 

There is no reason to think, however, that j 
Irving's self-sacrifice, while it heightened his 
reputation for magnanimous dealing, resulted 
in any real loss to American literature. Pres- 
cott had incomparably the ampler resources ; 
he was a more relentless investigator than 
Irving ; brooded longer over his subjects, until 
their artistic form of presentation became clear 
to him ; and so, even if he lacked something 
of Irving's natural magic of style, was the 
fitter man to do the work. Irving himself 
freely acknowledged this when Prescott's vol- 
umes on the " Conquest " were put into his 



THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 135 

hands. Prescott, on his part, paid Irving the 
finest compliments, in his preface and else- 
where. The entire incident was honorable to 
both writers. Prescott did not forget to be 
equally generous when it came time for him to 
throw open his Spanish preserves to Motley. J 

In the journal the withdrawal of Irving is 
thus recorded : — 

" The only competitor who, I feared, might 
possibly have turned his eyes in the same di- 
rection was Irving — not from any intimation 
he had given of this — which would have pre- 
vented me from thinking of it at all — but 
from the circumstance of his having formerly 
hunted on this ground. A very polite and 
courteous message from him, through our 
common friend Cogswell, followed by a letter 
of the .same tone, has put these doubts at 
rest, and left the field open to me. And now 
I shall go merrily forward in my historical 
labors." 

Prescott himself placed the milestones along 
his Mexican road. They are as follows : — 

May, 1838. "Began scattered reading on 
the subject, doubtful if I get my documents 



136 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

from Spain. Very listless and far-nient-ish. for 
a year. Over-visiting and not in spirits." 

April, 1839. "Began to read in earnest, 
having received manuscripts from Madrid." 

October 14, 1839. " Wrote first page of 
Introduction at Pepperell." 

March 1, 1841. " Finished Introduction 
and Part I. of Appendix." 

August, 1841-August, 1842. " Composed 
562 pages of print, text and notes of the nar- 
rative." 

August, 1842-August, 1843. "Composed 
425 pages print, text and notes ; revised Tick- 
nor's corrections and his wife's, of all the work. 
Corrected, etc., proofs of nearly all the work. 
The last book required severe reading of 
MSS." 

August 2, 1843. "Finished the work. So the 
Introduction, about half a vol., occupied about 
as long as the remaining two and a half vols, 
of dashing narrative." 

Further scattered excerpts from Prescott's 
own notes on his work will reveal, better than 
could labored description, his conception of his 
task and his methods in i£s execution. 



THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 137 

July 7, 1839. " The ' Conquest of Mexico ' 
was the greatest miracle in an age of mir- 
aci.es* • • • 

"In short, the true way of conceiving the 
subject is, not as a philosophical theme, but as 
an epic in prose. . . . 

" It is without doubt the most poetic subject 
ever offered to the pen of the historian." 

One notes in passing that Lowell agreed 
with Prescott. He at one time planned an epic 
on the Conquest of Mexico. 

Again from the journal : — 

July 21, 1839. "Not a bad week — but 
feel the want of solid materials to buckle 
to." . . . 

August 4, 1839. " My two volumes will be 
completed by May 4, 1842, my forty-sixth birth- 
day. There is nothing extravagant in this 
surely, and if I wrote from the auri fames it 
would be done to a certainty. As it is — in- 
certus sum" . . . 

January 1, 1840. "If I ever get out of the 
moonshine period of the old Aztecs." . . . 

February 9, 1840. " This last week received 
a diploma from the Koyal Academy of Science 



138 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

at Naples, and a letter accompanying it to Dr. 
Bachi from the President, Count Carmaldoli, 
in which he says ' my nomination was received 
with unanime acclamazionej and that ' I have 
written a work which, in the parts relating to 
Italy is assai superiore agli stessi ItalianiJ 
and that places ' Signor Prescott nel primo 
rango de piu grandi IstoriciS This will do for 
pulcherrima Italia" . . . 

June 15, 1840. " It [note-making] is a 
twaddly business. Bancroft saves his time pro- 
digiously by making none at all. I will do my 
duty by the Introduction, but when I have 
slipped on the Narrative, I will send the notes 
to the devil — at least all but strictly critical 
ones." . . . 

January 3, 1841. " My journal is paved, 
like some other places, with good resolu- 
tions." . . . 

January 10, 1841. " I have not been dili- 
gent enough. I chew on my subject more than 
enough. If I put my bones to it, I should do the 
work better as well as faster. I will. Or write 
against time and a forfeit as I did once to get 
a start in ' Ferdinand and Isabella.' "... 



THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 139 

April 1, 1841. "Allowing two days' reading 
for one of writing . . . will complete the work 
in two years and a quarter — say in July, 1843, 
[later penciled mem. ' The last pages were 
written in July, 1843 '] and why should I not? 
This is not faster than Gibbon wrote his last 
six vols, on an infinitely harder subject, nor 
nearly as fast as Irving wrote his l Colum- 
bus."' . . . 

September 28, 1841. " Finished text of chap. 
I Book 3 rd , . . . full of the picturesque — 
reads very like Miss Porter — rather boarding- 
schoolish finery. I am a fraud." . . . 

June 27, 1842. « I will try [to do fixed 
task] though this memorandum book is paved 
with resolutions, as hell-floor is said to be — 
a broken pavement, too." . . . 

August 2, 1843. " On the whole the last two 
years have been the most industrious of my 
life, I think — especially the last year, and as 
I have won the Capitol it entitles me to three 
months of literary loafing." 

Midway in his " Conquest of Mexico," the 
historian was compelled to turn aside to make 
an abridgment of " Ferdinand and Isabella." 



140 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

This was to head off a piratical edition then 
threatened. The job was most distasteful to 
Prescott, as Ticknor intimates, though he does 
not give the language which the journal used. 
The extract is full of that homely speech into 
which the Yankee blood in Prescott often im- 
pelled him to break in private, though most of 
it the elegant Ticknor passed by, in a stretch 
of charity for one who was not, like himself, 
always in full dress. 

July 19, 1841. "Finished Abridg. Hist. of 
F. & I. Io triumphe ! three weeks and a half 
since I first put pen to paper. About one 
tenth of the vol. written de novo — the rest 
docked, scissored, sweated, headed and tailed. 
I shied, like a skittish horse at a leap, and find 
'tis a mudpuddle only. Dirty work, however, 
and I wish the publishers would let it sleep till 
some one starts up with a rival abridgment." 

The abridgment was not, in fact, published, 
the pirate having sailed away. 

As usual, Prescott turned bookseller after 
bookwriter, and painstakingly scrutinized his 
accounts. The right of publishing the " Con- 
quest of Mexico " he sold to the Harpers from 



THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 141 

plates provided by himself. The publishers 
were to have 5000 copies, for which they 
offered 17500 in cash — " an enormous price," 
notes Prescott, " which I should not have had 
the courage to ask of any publisher." The 
agreement was for a single year, in which 
Harper and Brothers were to take as many 
more copies on the same terms as they might 
order. " I hope they may not be disappointed, 
for their sakes as well as mine. But this is 
a different contract from that which ushered 
4 Ferdinand and Isabella ' into the world." In 
the result, the 5000 copies were sold in four 
months. The English edition had also a great 
sale. Passing over mere business details, the 
following may be cited from Prescott's " Re- 
flections on the Printing, etc., of my Histo- 
ries," September 10, 1843. 

"I have employed Folsom and paid him 
fifty dollars per vol. for correcting the printed 
proofs. He has done it faithfully, and though 
I have not taken more than one in five of his 
corrections, I think they are worth the money. 
If I had taken them all, or nearly all, it would 
have ruined the book." 



142 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

A characterization of this famous and still 
familiar book of Prescott's could be called for 
only on the principle of the mediaeval scholar 
who, Hallam tells us, took for his motto, " This 
I include lest anything be left unsaid." One 
word may be inserted, however, in reply to the 
natural question how the " Conquest of Mex- 
ico " has stood the wear and tear of subsequent 
historical investigation. At first there was a 
decided lurch adverse to Prescott. Wilson and 
his school resolved u the golden cupolas of 
Mexico," as Disraeli called them with charac- 
teristic grandiloquence, into Indian mud huts, 
and made of the Spanish chroniclers a set of 
impudent liars. But the due reaction came. 
Archaeology has, of course, uncovered many 
things never guessed in Prescott's day in re- 
gard to " the moonshine period " of the Aztecs. 
Later scholars have sifted and checked Bernal 
Diaz — " that jewel of a chronicler " — and 
the other Spanish writers in a way not possible 
in Prescott's day. New material has come to 
light. Yet when every allowance of this sort has 
been made, the fact remains that the " Con- 
quest of Mexico " holds its own wonderfully 



THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 143 

well. Supercilious young novelists may sneer 
at it as "Prescott's romance that he passed 
off for history," but the competent know 
better. A fair and sufficient summary of the 
state of the case is given by H. H. Bancroft 
in his monumental " History of Mexico : " — 

" For his ' Conquest of Mexico,' besides all 
printed material extant, Mr. Prescott drew 
upon a large mass of new information in man- 
uscript, from several sources, notably from the 
valuable collection of Munoz, brought together 
for an intended history of America ; that of 
Vargas Ponce, obtained chiefly from Seville 
archives ; that of Navarrete, president of the 
Royal Academy of History at Madrid; and the 
archives of Cortes' heirs, all of which shed new 
light on almost every section of the subject. His 
deep research, manifest throughout in copious 
footnotes, is especially displayed in the very ap- 
propriate introduction on Mexican civilization, 
which enables the reader to gain an intimate 
knowledge of the people whose subjugation he 
follows. Good judgment is also attested in the 
dissertation on the moot question of the origin 



144 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

of this culture, wherein he prudently abstains 
from any decided conclusions. The fact of 
occasional inaccuracies cannot be severely crit- 
icised when we consider the infirmity under 
which the author labored. Since his time so 
great a mass of material has been brought to 
light that the aspect of history is much 
changed. This new material consists partly of 
native records, and it is due to his unacquaint- 
ance with these records that a great lack is im- 
plied in his pages. The fact that Prescott relied 
too much on Spanish material may account 
for the marked bias in favor of the conquer- 
ors in many instances where strict impartiality 
might be expected, and for the condemna- 
tory and reflective assertions which at times 
appear in direct contradiction to previous lines 
of thought. At times, as if aware of this ten- 
dency, he assumes a calmness that ill fits the 
theme, giving it the very bias he seeks to avoid. 
Yet with all this it is safe to say that few 
histories have been written in which the quali- 
ties of philosopher and artist are so happily 
blended." 

The immediate enthusiasm with which the 



THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 145 

" Conquest of Mexico " was received has been 
implied. The book won a much wider audience 
than " Ferdinand and Isabella." From across 
the Atlantic came approving voices. Edward 
Everett wrote of a dispute between Hallam 
and Thomas Grenville over the question of 
style. Was that of the " Conquest " superior 
to that of " Ferdinand and Isabella " ? Hal- 
lam thought so. Grenville was inclined to 
stand by his former preference. What it was, 
Everett stated in his address on Prescott be- 
fore the Massachusetts Historical Society in 
1859: "Calling one day on the venerable 
Mr. Thomas Grenville, whom I found in his 
library (the second in size and value of the 
private libraries of England) reading Xeno- 
phon's 'Anabasis ' in the original, I made 
some passing remark on the beauty of that 
work. 'Here,' said he, holding up a volume 
of ' Ferdinand and Isabella,' ' is one far 
superior.' " 

From Hamburg, Francis Lieber wrote, on 
November 9, 1844 : — 

" I had the pleasure of seeing A. Humboldt 
at Pottsdam, and of hearing from his lips the 



146 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

praise of you. We talked a good deal of your 
works, and I was delighted to find that his 
opinion agreed in every point, so far as our 
conversation went, with mine. . . . 

" Humboldt agreed with me that your ' Fer- 
dinand and Isabella ' is, so far as the taste of 
the historian is concerned, the first work of all 
which have appeared on either side of the water 
these many years." 

Robert C. Winthrop, in a letter from Paris, 
told Prescott that "Mignet greeted me most 
cordially as Vami de Prescott" Messages came 
again from Thierry. 

Eeporters of English praise were many. 
George Bancroft wrote from London, July 20, 
1847: — 

"There is but one opinion. They speak 
without jealousy, and you are almost the only 
American person, state, or thing that they com- 
mend without reserve." 

An extract may be given from a letter by 
Miss Edgeworth : — 

" What pleasure and pride, honest, proper 
pride, you must feel, my dear Mr. Prescott, in 
the sense of difficulty conquered, — of diffi- 



THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 147 

culties innumerable vanquished by the perse- 
verance and fortitude of genius ! It is a fine 
example to human nature ; and will form to 
great works genius in the rising generation and 
in ages yet unborn. 

" What a new and ennobling view of post- 
humous fame ! — a view which short-sighted, 
narrow-minded mediocrity cannot reach, and 
probably would call romantic ; but which the 
noble-minded realize to themselves, and ask not 
either the sympathy or the comprehension of 
the commonplace mean ones. 

"You need not apologize for speaking of 
yourself to the world. No one in the world 
whose opinion is worth looking to will ever 
think or call this ' egotism.' " 

In his journal Prescott noted, under date of 
February 3, 1844 : — 

" Letter to Ticknor from Lyell, ' everybody 
in London is reading the " C. of M.," ' and old 
Professor Smyth writes to T., * its arrival is 
most welcome, for Mr. P. is considered in this 
country as the first of modern historians.' 
This from such a quarter is not to be laid on 
the shelf. But the favorable impression which 



148 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

the work seems to have made in England does 
not please me more than a passage in a letter 
of Mr. George Sumner, now in Spain, to his 
brother. Mr. S., with whom I am unacquainted, 
says : — 

" ' Only a few days since, at a session of the 
Academia de Bellas Artes in Seville, I was 
welcomed by all, from the President down to 
the porter, and welcomed como conciudadano 
del Senor Prescott.' This tribute from the 
people to whose annals I have devoted myself, 
is very grateful to me." 

Another entry gives an extract from a letter 
by George Sumner containing Irving's opin- 
ion on the " Conquest of Mexico " which Pres- 
cott said that he valued next to Humboldt's. 
Irving was reported : — 

" I have just received Prescott's ' Conquest 
of Mexico.' I had already perused it in proof 
sheets lent me by Mr. Calderon de la Barca. 
It is an admirable work and fully sustains the 
high reputation he acquired by his 4 Ferdinand 
and Isabella.' It has the advantage, too, of 
being quite different as to the nature of the 
theme, so as to afford a variety in the exercise 



THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 149 

of his pen. I shall now look forward with con- 
fident anticipations of delight to the history of 
' Philip the Second ' which he is about to un- 
dertake, and which will open a new field for 
his talent. The two works he has produced 
are signal triumphs for our literature, which 
will be repeated in every language of the civi- 
lized world." 

Humboldt himself came forward with his 
tribute : — 

February, 1845. " Kec'd a letter from Baron 
Humboldt — a gratifying testimonial of his 
approval of my Mexican labors. He says he 
has gone over the book line by line, with a 
critical eye, and professes his intention to have 
translated it, but was anticipated. May be so 
— may be not. But at all events, such a let- 
ter from this quarter is as high a recompense 
as I can receive - — in this way. But it loses 
its peculiar value to me, for my father cannot 
read it with me." 

Unspoiled by praise, Prescott thought chiefly 
of the pleasure which the honor done him would 
give to others. Thus on April 23, 1845, he 
noted : — 



150 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

" In my laziness I forgot to record at the 
time the greatest academic honor I have re- 
ceived — the greatest I shall ever receive — 
my election as corresponding member of the 
French Institute of the Academy of Moral and 
Political Science. I was chosen to fill the 
vacancy made by the death of the illustrious 
Navarrete. ... By the last steamer I received 
a diploma also from the Royal Academy of 
Berlin as corresponding member of the Class 
of Philosophy and History. This body, over 
which Humboldt presides, and which has been 
made famous by the learned labors of Niebuhr, 
Raumer, Ranke, etc., etc., ranks next to the 
Institute among the greatest Academies of the 
Continent. Such testimonies from a distant 
land are the real rewards of the scholar. 
What pleasure would they have given to 
my dear father ! I feel as if they came too 
late!" 

In a final note on the flattering reception 
of his " Conquest of Mexico " by both the pub- 
lic and scholars, Prescott wrote, character- 
istically, " It is somewhat enervating, and 
has rather an unwholesome effect to podder 



THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 151 

long over these personalities. The best course 
is action — things not self — at all events 
ijot self-congratulation. So now I propose to 
dismiss all further thoughts of my literary 



success." 



CHAPTER XII 

THE "CONQUEST OF PERU" 

Prescott's " Peru " was of the nature of a 
by-product. Much of the materials — Munoz, 
Navarrete, and the others — that gave him 
Cortes gave him also Pizarro. The historian 
pressed on quickly after his " Mexico " and 
wrote his thousand octavo pages on the " Con- 
quest of Peru " in what was, for him, the short 
space of two years. This did not mean scamped 
work. It signified, rather, collections in hand 
and mastery of method. He was himself hu- 
morously appalled at his rapid progress. 

" 1 began composition Wednesday ; finished 
Saturday noon ; about three days, or more than 
twelve pages print per diem. I never did so 
much, I think, before in the same time, though 
I have done more in a single day. At this 
rate, I should work up the ' Peru ' — the two 
volumes — in just about two months. Lord, 
deliver me ! What a fruitful author I might 



THE CONQUEST OF PERU 153 

become, were I so feloniously intent ! Felo de 
se, it would be more than all others." 

July 28, 1845. " At this rate I shall turn 
off a brace of octavos a year ! ... It would 
not be decent, nor politic, to turn out histories 
like romances — people would not believe 
them ! — any more than the writers of them 
do. For do our best — what is truth — and 
where ? Not in the records of stupid soldiers, 
false priests, and credulous chroniclers." 

August 15, 1845. " Great doings for so long 
a stretch — and would carry me through more 
than 1000 pages per annum ! , . . Lucky for 
the world I am not starving ! " 

December 26, 1845. " If I can once get in 
harness and at work I shall do well — but my 
joints are stiff, I think, as I grow old. So, to 
give myself a start, I have made a wager with 
Otis that I will reel off at least one page per 
diem for four months. ... If I can't do this, 
it must be a gone case and Pizarro may look 
to have his misdeeds shown up by a better pen. 
. . . When I have the great reign of Philip 
the Prudent to prosecute, I will, God willing, 
conclude ' The History of the Conquest of 



154 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

Peru ' by December 31, '46. . . . Shame on 
me if I fail." 

January 11, 1846. "A miracle — I have 
kept my resolve thus far and been industrious 
three whole days ! Now, meliora spero" 

He was none too deeply in love with his 
subject — " second-rate," he voted it to him- 
self ; " quarrels of banditti over their spoils." 
He also felt an artistic lack in his theme : — 

April 23, 1845. " Its great defect is want 
of unity. ... A consecutive tissue of adven- 
tures, . . . but not the especial interest that 
belongs to the ' Iliad ' and to the ' Conquest 
of Mexico,' — a story, by the way, which Che- 
valier, in his critique, rightly regards as supe- 
rior to the 4 Iliad ' in true epic proportion and 
capabilities. . . . Variety, variety is the se- 
cret of interest. Expectation is another. . . . 
Deal candidly but with stern candor in describ- 
ing the deeds and misdeeds of the Conquerors ; 
and never call hard names, a la Southey. It is 
unhistorical, unphilosophical, ungentlemanlike. 
. . . But beware of Robertson. Never glance 
at him till after subject moulded in my mind 
and thrown into language." 



THE CONQUEST OF PERU 155 

Swift, but in accordance with law, to use 
his favorite quotation from the Italian poet, 
he pushed on his work, finishing it only two 
months after his vowed Christmas of 1846. 

One more indication of Prescott's industry 
at this period may be taken from his private 
records : — 

May 4, 1846. "My fiftieth birthday; a 
half century ! This is getting on with a ven- 
geance. It is one of those frightful halting- 
places in a man's life, that may make him 
reflect a little. But half a century is too long 
a road to be looked over in half an hour ; so 
I will defer it — till when ? But what have I 
done the last year ? Not misspent much of it. 
The first eleven months, from April 26th, 1845, 
to March 26th, 1846, I wrote five hundred 
and twenty pages, text and notes, of my 4 Con- 
quest of Peru.' The quantity is sufficient, and, 
in the summer especially, my industry was at 
fever-heat. But I fear I have pushed the mat- 
ter indiscreetly." 

The indiscretion was in overstraining his 
eye. He injured it severely, " Heaven knows 
how," he wrote, " probably by manuscript- 



156 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

digging." His resolve was to depend more and 
more upon the vision of others. Not much later 
than this, after taking advice from the best 
oculists of the day in New York and Boston, 
he determined to " relinquish all use of the eye 
for the future in studies, and to be content if 
I can preserve it for the more vulgar purposes 
of life." 

The " Conquest of Peru " was published in 
March, 1847. The Harpers paid him $7500 
on the day of publication — at the rate of one 
dollar a copy — terms, Ticknor remarks, " more 
liberal than had ever been offered for a work 
of grave history on this side of the Atlantic." 
The English rights were bought by Bentley 
for $ 4000. Before this, Prescott had made a 
note on the value of his copyrights. 

May 4, 1846. " The Harpers give me good 
accounts of my works. They consider my copy- 
rights as worth no less than $ 25,000 apiece. 
If I allow only half that sum, which I should 
be very loath to take for them, the amount, 
with about $30,000 I have already received 
on the two histories, will swell up to a very 
pretty little honorarium for my literary lum- 



THE CONQUEST OF PERU 157 

ber. . . . My hours have been since my re- 
turn [from New York] a fortnight ago sadly 
broken up by sitting for my portrait to West 
— not for myself but for some unknown who 
has thought it worth paying for. It is a cruel 
moth, eating up time and temper. But it will 
go hard before I sit for another. Yet I should 
like to get one satisfactory likeness — as those 
hitherto taken have not pleased my friends." 

Prescott had pleasant personal relations with 
a young man destined to become the first au- 
thority on Peru. Clements (afterwards Sir 
Clements) R. Markham wrote from London 
on March 5, 1856 : — 

" The perusal of your charming ' Conquest 9 
at a time when I was serving on the west coast 
of South America first gave me a wish to see 
Cuzco, and steadily keeping this wish in view 
I was on my road to gratify it when I had the 
pleasure of spending a few agreeable days at 
PeppereU in 1852." 

It was in reference to this visit that Mark- 
ham testified of Prescott : — 

" He it was who encouraged me to under- 
take my Peruvian investigations, and to perse- 



158 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

vere in them. To his friendly advice and assist- 
ance I owe more than I can say, and to him is 
due, in no small degree, the value of anything 
I have since been able to do in furtherance 
of Peruvian research." 

Markham's mature verdict on Prescott's 
"Peru "was ("Academy," No. 95) : "It de- 
servedly stands in the first rank as a judicious 
history of the Conquest." This competent 
critic does not deny, in his masterly elucida- 
tions of early Peruvian history, that Prescott 
needs largely to be supplemented in all that 
relates to Inca civilization. Of the elaborate 
researches now available, the historian of sixty 
years ago was necessarily ignorant. But he 
knew all that was to be known at the time ; 
he sifted his authorities with enormous dili- 
gence and much acumen ; and produced a work 
which, while contributing only a little to the 
philosophy of history, brought out stores of 
information conveyed in animated narrative. 

Among the many letters which the " Con- 
quest of Peru " brought Prescott, only one, 
not before published, need be referred to here. 
It touches American literature on the quaint 



THE CONQUEST OF PERU 159 

side. R. GL Haliburton writes from Halifax, 
April 9, 1857, saying that lie is engaged in 
investigating the popular customs of various 
peoples and in trying to trace them to their 
source. He submits to Prescott two ques- 
tions : — 

1. Was the Peruvian plough in the form of 
a cross ? 

2. A certain instrument (described) was 
found in the hand of a statue discovered by 
Stephens in Central America ; could Mr. Pres- 
cott give him any light upon the question of 
its use and significance ? 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE ENGLISH VISIT 

In the journal for June 16, 1839, occurs this 
entry : " Received a pleasant letter from Mr. 
Kenyon, who quotes Sydney Smith »as saying 
that if I shall visit London, and can't swim, 
I shall be drowned, either in their claret or 
turtle soup." 

Prescott's quiet addition was : — 
" I believe I can swim in those seas." 
But it was long before he made the plunge. 
The European reputation which his "Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella " won him, together with 
his exchange of private letters with scholars, 
early brought Prescott many and warm invita- 
tions to go abroad. These he steadily with- 
stood, though often after much hesitation, 
and it was not until 1850 that he yielded, 
partly on physicians' advice. Extracts from 
his journal show his decisions — and his va- 
cillations — on the subject: — 



THE ENGLISH VISIT 161 

January 26, 1841. "Now why should I 
not go ahead ? Because I am thinking of going 
to England! . . . My mind is distracted with 
the pros and cons." 

March 11, 1841. "Have decided at length 
— after as much doubt and deliberation as 
most people would take for a voyage round the 
world — and decided not to go to England. 
... I consider my free, full, and final deter- 
mination now as settling the question forever, 
respecting a visit to Europe, whither I shall 
never go nor think of going, except for impor- 
tant business exacting it — or with my own 
family." 

June 1, 1846. "I wish also to be free for 
a voyage there [England] if I so dispose, next 
Spring." 

Sailing from New York on the 2 2d of May, 
1850, Prescott had a seasick passage. Though 
spending so large a part of his summers by the 
sea, he was a poor sailor, and he wrote to his 
wife from the steamer Niagara, June 3 : — 

"Nothing can redeem the utter wretched- 
ness of a sea life — and never will I again put 
my foot in a steamer, except for Yankee land, 



162 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

and, if I were not ashamed, should reembark 
in the Saturday steamer from Liverpool, and 
settle the wager in another fortnight." 

He also wrote : — 

" This sea life is even worse than I thought 
it was. I had forgotten half its miseries. I 
will never trust a man hereafter who talks 
complacently of it. As to Kirk [his private 
secretary] he has been actively sick ever since 
we left Halifax. For myself, I have had a 
basis of nausea that turns my stomach against 
everything I usually like. Chewing camomile 
is my best satisfaction — almost as bad off as 
Milton's devils with their dust apples." 

But from the moment of landing in Liver- 
pool he was in the warmest air of English 
hospitality, and, throughout his stay, was over- 
whelmed with the most flattering attentions 
by the leaders of society and the lights of the 
learned world. A large bundle of the invitations 
which the season brought him is preserved 
among his papers. He was, in fact, one of the 
lions of the year. When Lockhart met him, it 
was with the remark, " You and the Nepaulese 
ambassador are the lions of London, I believe." 



THE ENGLISH VISIT 163 

"And the Hippopotamus," Prescott added 
readily. His Nepaulese rival he described to 
his wife: "He is walking about here at the 
evening parties with a huge necklace of rough 
emeralds, a scarlet petticoat well garnished 
with pearls, and a head-gear made of the beak 
of a bird, six inches high." 

Ticknor was not far wrong in saying that 
Prescott's was "the most brilliant visit ever 
made to England by an American citizen not 
clothed with the prestige of official station." 
The justifying letters are largely given in the 
two chapters devoted to the episode in the 
"Life." Ticknor took certain liberties with 
the text. His severe pen struck out passages 
wherein the Yankee levity of his compatriot 
seemed too daring — especially when in the 
presence of royal personages. Thus Prescott's 
description of the young queen at Castle How- 
ard is amusingly toned down and now and 
then boldly altered. It is evident that, through 
all the round of sight-seeing and entertain- 
ment the historian remained wholly himself. 
Whether with his titled friends, or in the com- 
pany of Hallam and Macaulay, Ford and 



164 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

Thackeray, Rogers and Milman, he lost neither 
his native charm nor his native simplicity and 
shrewdness. Going to England with a high 
" preconceived estimate of the English char- 
acter," he found it raised by his experience. 
Yet he allowed his critical faculty full play as 
respects " the great-little island," and felt the 
pull of his native land through all. " I was 
not in my own dear wild America," he wrote 
to his wife, when explaining his longing to 
see "a ragged fence or an old stump, or a bit 
of rock, or even a stone as big as one's fist," 
in the passage through the well-kept country 
between Liverpool and London. 

A few intimate bits may be rescued from 
the letters which Ticknor passed by : — 

London, June 7, 1850. 
It was a rich cit's dinner — dull eno' — and 
concluded by a clergyman — a great gun here 
— r- making an exposition of a verse or two of 
" Eevelations " — a hopeful theme. In the 
midst of the lecture a mischievous clock in 
the room struck ten — and at once went off 
with a waltz, running it off merrily, as if to 



THE ENGLISH VISIT 165 

distance the preacher. The poor host was in 
great alarm — tried in vain to throttle the 
imp ; the more he tried, the louder the tunes 
it played ; till the good divine was fairly 
silenced. Is it not a strange style of things 
at a dinner ? But they tell me here it is not 
likely I shall meet with such an experience 
again. 

London, June 9, 1850. 
In the latter part of the evening, as I was 
talking with the Duchess of Leeds — one of 
the Catons (Louisa) who has grown coarser, 
with a bad complexion — a rather striking-look- 
ing Jewish cast of physiognomy, with long love- 
locks, attracted my eye, and she said, " That 
is Disraeli, would you like to know him? v 
" Pray," said he, " are you related to the great 
American author — the author of the Spanish 
Histories ? " I squeezed his arm, telling him 
that I could not answer for the greatness, but 
I was the man himself ; and though at first he 
was a little confused — as one or two near 
smiled at the blunder — we had a merry 
chat. 



166 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

June 11, 1850. 
The lunch [with Ford] was all Spanish, — 
Spanish wines, — delicious ; Spanish dishes, 
which good breeding forced me to taste, but 
no power could force me to eat, for they were 
hotter than the Inquisition. 

June 30, 1850. 
The Prince did me the honor to say a few 
words to me. He asked me, of course, how long 
I had been here, said he believed this was not 
my first visit to the country, and expressed" his 
satisfaction that I had now repeated my visit. 
To all which I replied with wonderful pre- 
sence of mind, "Your Royal Highness does 
me honor." I was introduced, by the bye, at 
Hallam's the other day, to a gentleman whom 
I thought he called Ld. Aberdeen. Hallam in 
introducing me made a little flourish about my 
being already known, etc., and as I like to 
give tit for tat on such occasions, as far as 
may be, I said, " And the name of the person 
to whom I have the honor of being intro- 
duced is also known wherever the Anglo-Saxon 
race is to be found." Afterwards at dinner I 



THE ENGLISH VISIT 167 

observed that this individual with whom I had 
then no further talk, seemed very shy when- 
ever I attempted to address him across the 
table. On my asking the lady next me if this 
was not Lord Aberdeen she said it was Lord 
Harry Vane. 

London, July 18, 1850. 
Lockhart showed us the diary of Sir Walter. 
He (Lockhart) had two copies of it printed for 
himself. One of them was destroyed in printing 
the memoir, for which he made extracts. One 
he did not make because the party was living. 
It was this : " We dined at Sam Rogers' etc. 
He told me that it was recommended to print 
the Italian on the opposite pages of Rose's 
translation of Ariosto, in order the better to 
understand the English. " 

London, September 4, 1850. 
Just seen old Rogers, for the last time, — 
Cato the Censor Atticized. He was in his draw- 
ing-room, preparing to go to Brighton, and says 
he has humbugged the world this time. 

Rogers had been desperately ill and not ex- 
pected to live — hence the " humbug." 



168 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

For a contemporary English account of the 
impression which Prescott made upon the Eng- 
lish society in which he was so welcome, an 
extract may be taken from a privately printed 
memoir by Sir William Stirling : — 

" Amongst the many occasions when it was 
the good fortune of the author of this sketch 
to meet Mr. Prescott, there is one which has 
especially stamped itself on his memory. It 
was on a delightful summer day, at a dinner 
given at the ' Trafalgar,' at Greenwich, by Mr. 
Murray, of Albemarle Street. Of that small 
and well-chosen circle, the brightest lights are, 
alas ! already quenched. The festive humor of 
Ford will no more enliven the scene he loved 
so well ; nor will the wit of Lockhart and the 
wisdom of Hallam evermore brighten or adorn 
banquets like that at which they met their 
fellow-laborer from the New World. Every- 
thing was in perfection, — the weather, the 
preliminary stroll beneath the great chestnut- 
trees in Greenwich Park, the cool upper room 
with its balcony overhanging the river, the 
dinner, from the prefatory water-souchy to 
the ultimate deviled white-bait, the assortment, 



THE ENGLISH VISIT 169 

spirits, and conversation of the guests. On our 
return to town in the cool of the summer night, 
it was the good fortune of the present writer 
to sit beside Mr. Prescott, on the box of the 
omnibus which Mr. Murray had chartered for 
his party. It was there that the historian re- 
lated to him the fortunes of his first historical 
work. He likewise described with great zest 
a more recent incident of his life. Some days 
before that, he had dined with the late Sir 
Robert Peel. With the punctuality which was 
very noticeable amidst all the bustle of Mr. 
Prescott's endless London engagements, he was 
in Whitehall gardens at the precise moment 
indicated on the card of invitation. It followed, 
as a natural result, that he was for some min- 
utes the sole occupant of the drawing-room. 
In due time, Sir Robert walked in, very bland 
and a little formal, somewhat more portly than 
he appeared on the canvas of Lawrence, some- 
what less rotund than he was wont to be fig- 
ured in the columns of ' Punch.' Although 
not personally known to his host, Mr. Prescott 
took for granted that his name had been an- 
nounced. It was to his great surprise, there- 



170 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

fore, that he found himself addressed in French. 
He replied in the same language, inly musing 
whether he had been mistaken for somebody 
else, or whether to speak French to all persons 
from beyond the sea was the etiquette of Brit- 
ish statesmanship, or the private predilection 
of Peel. After some introductory topics had 
been got over, he was still further mystified 
by finding the dialogue turned towards the 
drama, and being complimented on his great 
success in that unfamiliar walk of letters. The 
astonished historian was making the reply which 
his native modesty dictated, when a second 
guest, a friend of his own, entered, and ad- 
dressed both of them in English. Mr. Prescott 
had been mistaken for M. Scribe, — a blun- 
der ludicrous enough to those who know the 
contrast that existed between the handsome 
person of the historian, and the undistinguished 
appearance of the most prolific of modern play- 
wrights. By a curious chance, M. Scribe did 
not arrive until a large party of political and 
literary celebrities were seated at dinner, and 
Mr. Prescott concluded his story by remarking 



THE ENGLISH VISIT 171 

on the graceful kindness with which Sir Rob- 
ert hastened to meet him at the door, and 
smoothed the foreigner's way to a place amongst 
strangers." 



CHAPTEB XIV 

PEESONAL TRAITS 

George Hillard, writing to Prescott in 1844, 
spoke impulsively of " that warm heart of 
yours which makes those who have the privi- 
lege of being your friends entirely forget that 
you are a great historian, and only think of 
you as a person to be loved." This is but one 
of a hundred testimonies to Prescott's extraor- 
dinary personal charm that might be cited. 
He was a universal social favorite. " If I were 
asked," said Theophilus Parsons, " to name the 
man whom I have known whose coming was 
most sure to be hailed as a pleasant event by 
all whom he approached, I should not only 
place Prescott at the head of the list, but I 
could not place any other man near him." It 
was not that he was a professional diner-out, 
still less the even more portentous being, a pro- 
fessional teller of stories and retailer of smart 
sayings. Prescott used sometimes to make 



PERSONAL TRAITS 173 

horrible puns, it is true, but his social manner 
had its immense attraction mainly through un- 
failing kindness, unerring sympathy, and viva- 
cious good spirits which nothing could depress. 
It was his simplicity and spontaneity which 
delighted everybody. This is illustrated by a 
letter from Mr. G. T. Curtis to Mr. Hillard. 
" Prescott, the historian," he writes, " not yet 
an author, was at that time in the full flush of 
his early manhood, running over with animal 
spirits, which his studies and self-discipline 
could not quench ; talking with a joyous aban- 
don, laughing at his own inconsequences, recov- 
ering himself gayly, and going on again in a 
graver strain, which soon gave way to some 
new joke or brilliant sally. Wherever Tie came 
there was always a 4 fillip ' to the discourse, be 
it of books or society, or reminiscences of for- 
eign travel, or the news of the day." 

Sometimes this native spontaneity of his 
betrayed him into an unconscious malapropos. 
" What have I said?" he would cry out when 
he saw his wife, who kept a dutiful watch upon 
these lapses of his, looking at him severely. 
Once a titled Englishwoman was arguing with 



174 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

him in his own home on the subject of Amer- 
icanisms. She objected strongly to our use of 
the word " snarl " in the sense of confusion 
« Why, surely," spoke up Prescott in all inno- 
cence, "you would say that your ladyship's 
hair is in a snarl?" As such unfortunately 
was the case at the moment — and it was the 
day of smooth braids and polished bands — 
the visitor had to cool her wrath by remem- 
bering that her host was blind. He used to 
enjoy little dinners which he called " crony- 
ings." His friend from boyhood, Gardiner, 
describes one of the latest of these occa- 
sions : — 

" It was at my own house, either on the last 
day of January, or one of the earliest days of 
February, 1858. It was a party so small that 
it hardly deserves the name. Prescott and two 
of his most intimate friends, besides myself 
and my family, were all who filled a small 
round table. He had suffered during the past 
year from frequent and severe headaches ; a 
source of more uneasiness to his friends than 
to himself, for he never attributed these head- 
aches to what the event proved them to be. He 



PERSONAL TRAITS 175 

thought them either neuralgic, or a new phase 
of his old enemy, rheumatism ; nothing that 
required extraordinary care. For a few days 
past he had been unusually free from them, 
and this day he was particularly bright and 
clear. From the beginning he was in one of 
his most lively and amusing moods. The la- 
dies were induced by it to linger longer at 
the table than usual. When they had left, the 
whole company was reduced to only a party 
of four, but of very old friends, each of whom 
was stored with many reminiscences of like 
occasions, running far back into younger days. 
Prescott overflowed with the full tide of mirth 
belonging to those days. It was a gush of rare 
enjoyment. After nearly five years, the date 
at which I write, I cannot recall a thing that 
was said. Probably nothing was said in itself 
worth recalling, nothing that would bear to 
stand alone on cold paper. But all that quick- 
wittedness, lively repartee, sparkling humor, 
exceeding naivete, and droll manner of saying 
droll things, for which he was so remarkable 
when he let himself out with perfect freedom, 
were brought into full play. And then he 



176 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

laughed, as lie only could laugh, at next to 
nothing, when he was in one of these moods, 
and made us inevitably laugh too, almost as 
the Cambridge professor did according to his 
own story. He stayed, too, considerably be- 
yond his usual time, the rarest of all things 
with him. But he had come bent on having 
' a good time,' — it was so long, he said, since 
he had had one, — and laid out for it accord- 
ingly. 

" On comparing notes a few days afterwards 
with the two friends who were present, we all 
agreed that we had not seen ' the great his- 
torian' for years in such a state of perfect 
youthful abandonment." 

From the pen of Samuel Eliot we have an 
account of the home life of Prescott at his 
country place in Pepperell. Here the man of 
whom a friend said that he " could be happy 
in more ways and more happy in every one 
of them than any other person I have ever 
known," passed his happiest hours. Work went 
on as usual, but did not seem to be his princi- 
pal interest. This lay in "the enjoyment of 
the family and the friends forming a portion 



PERSONAL TRAITS 177 

of the family ; the drive or the walk ; the gay- 
dinner ; the evening with readings, but oftener 
and more delightfully with games and songs." 
One game in particular was an especial favor- 
ite with Prescott. It was called Albano, be- 
cause introduced by some young friends of his 
who had played it in Rome. It was really only 
a variant of Puss in the Corner. The players 
chose names from the four quarters of the 
globe ; but the one which Prescott took, and 
which he never shouted out without provoking 
tumultuous outbursts of glee, was Nessitisset. 
It was the name of the stream flowing by his 
farm. Eliot also tells of a comic dispute which 
once occurred at Pepperell between Prescott 
and his uncle, Isaac Davis. The old gentle- 
man complained of growing deaf, but Prescott 
maintained that his uncle's hearing was as 
good as his own. To decide the matter, he had 
his wife hang an old-fashioned watch at the end 
of the room, and the two men advanced slowly 
towards it to determine which could first hear 
the ticking. " Do you hear it, Davis ? " " No." 
"Neither do I." So on, step by step, until 
in amazement Prescott put his ear actually 



178 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

to the timepiece. " Susan ! the thing is n't 
going ! " he cried to the sly woman who had 
stopped it. 

" He is forty-five," wrote Sumner of Prescott 
in 1841, "but with the freedom and warmth 
and frolic of a boy." This boyish spirit and well- 
ing gayety Prescott carried into his work as 
well as his social relaxation. One of his secre- 
taries wrote that whenever the historian came 
to describe some stirring scene, like a battle, 
he would humorously key himself up to it by 
bursting into song. One favorite was a ballad, 
beginning, " O, give me but my Arab steed ! " 
He was fond of music. Sentimental songs 
would sometimes set him weeping. " They are 
only my opera tears," he would explain. This 
was one sign of that " simplicity in which 
nobleness of nature most largely shares," to 
quote the words of Thucydides which Professor 
Felton applied to Prescott after his death. 
Such tributes could be indefinitely multiplied. 
" One of the most frank, amiable, warm-hearted, 
and open-hearted of human beings," wrote Hil- 
lard ; and added, " Of all men I have known 
he was most generally beloved." It might be 



PERSONAL TRAITS 179 

said of Prescott, as Sydney Smith said of 
Mackintosh, that " the gall-bladder was omit- 
ted in his composition." " Not a single unkind 
or harsh or sneering expression," testifies one 
of his secretaries, " could be found in any of 
the hundreds of letters I wrote at his dicta- 
tion." The same may be said of his private 
journals. Not a line of them need be blotted. 
This man had that even sweetness of temper 
and exhaustless benevolence which can endure 
the searching test of impressions made upon 
children and servants. He was not a hero to 
his valet, but was something better — a man 
to win the undying respect and love of all who 
served him in humblest offices. All his private 
secretaries had an almost unbounded affection 
for him. To children, his appearance was like 
a burst of sunshine. He could instantly be- 
come the playfellow of the youngest. He him- 
self had a sweet tooth. In his early travels he 
carefully noted, after sampling, the confection- 
ery of the various countries he visited. Until 
within a few years a Boston druggist was liv- 
ing who used to supply Prescott regularly with 
licorice root — that child's dainty of a ruder 



180 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

age ! His grandchildren recall the little packets 
of it which, with other sweets, he always had 
ready for them. 

With his innocent fondness for the good 
things of life, and his expansive social nature, 
Prescott often found it difficult to adhere to 
hours and plans of work. He did not, with 
Tyndall, hold society to be the great enemy of 
science, yet he sometimes found the tax paid 
to friendship onerous. A boon companion of 
his youth gives an early instance of the way in 
which pleasure struggled with his rule of quit- 
ting any company by ten o'clock. 

" Mr. Prescott was the entertainer, at a re- 
staurateur's, of an invited company of young 
men of the bort vivant order. He took that 
mode sometimes of giving a return dinner to 
avoid intruding too much on the hospitality of 
his father's roof, as well as to put at ease the 
sort of company which promised exuberant 
mirth. His dinner hour was set early ; pur- 
posely, no doubt, that all might be well over 
in good season. But it proved to be a pro- 
longed festivity. Under the brilliant auspices 
of their host, who was never in higher spirits, 



PERSONAL TRAITS 181 

the company became very gay, and not at all 
disposed to abridge their gayety, even after a 
reasonable number of hours. As the hour of 
ten drew near, I noticed that Prescott was 
beginning to get a little fidgety, and to drop 
some hints, which no one seemed willing to 
take, — for no one present, unless it were my- 
self, was aware that time was of any more 
importance to our host than it was to many 
of his guests. Presently, to the general sur- 
prise, the host himself got up abruptly, and 
addressed the company nearly as follows : 
c Really, my friends, I am very sorry to be 
obliged to tear myself from you at so very 
unreasonable an hour ; but you seem to have 
got your sitting-breeches on for the night. I 
left mine at home, and must go. But I am 
sure you will be very soon in no condition 
to miss me, — especially as I leave behind 
that excellent representative,' — pointing to a 
basket of several yet uncorked bottles, which 
stood in a corner. 4 Then you know,' he added, 
' you are just as much at home in this house as 
I am. You can call for what you like. Don't 
be alarmed, — I mean on my account. I aban- 



182 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

don to you, without reserve, all my best wine, 
my credit with the house, and my reputation 
to boot. Make free with them all, I beg of 
you, — and, if you don't go home till morning, 
I wish you a merry night of it.' With this he 
was off, and the Old South clock, hard by, was 
heard to strike ten at the instant." 

A few extracts from the journals will further 
light up this point : — 

November 10, 1839. "Diverted too much 
by passing objects — children's recitations, 
talking, etc. Another year arrange what hours 
children may occupy the library [at Pepperell] 
— how often ask questions about their lessons, 
and allow a definite time for them — not to be 
exceeded." . . . 

February 6, 1842. " Have not been superin- 
dustrious — on the contrary, I have got through 
with Dickens, who dined with me yesterday, 
and as the lions are all done up, I suspect, 
for the season, I will be true and hearty, al- 
most exclusive, in my own work — till May 4, 
say, my birthday. My daily labor and my 
thoughts by night. Eschew company, especially 
dining." . . . 



PERSONAL TRAITS 183 

September 4, 1842. " Company — company 
— company ! It will make me a misanthrope. 
And yet there is something very interesting 
and instructive in the conversation of travel- 
ers from distant regions. Last week we had 
Calderon — just from Mexico — Stephens 
from Central America and Yucatan, General 
Harlan from Afghanistan, where he com- 
manded the native troops for many years. 
But what has it all to do with the ' Conquest 
of Mexico '?"... 

September 8, 1842. " I am here [Pepperell] 
40 miles from all enemies — and friends, worse 
than enemies — except a few dear ones." . . . 

November 16, 1842. " I will see if I can't 
adopt some rules which shall secure me as 
much time in town as country." . • . 

June 24,1843. "Nahant! To-day I have been 
settling, clearing the decks for action. Now 
if I don't make the powder and shot fly ! I will 
be out to everybody. I will have but one idea. 
I will be a free man by September — first week. 
I will not invite nor will I go out to dine, and 
very rarely have company — once or twice 
only — and that only at Nahant, and not sit 



184 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

long then. I will answer letters short hand, 
and economize every way, eyes and time. . . . 
The very day of this entry a stranger came to 
Nahant and, being refused admittance — I be- 
ing < out ' — staid over night and passed all 
the evening with us. He came, he said, to 
Boston to see me, so what could I do less ? 
What then becomes of the Conquest ? ot fiol 
It is no joke." . . . 

December 14, 1845. " Twaddle — twaddle ! 
... I will make regular hebdomadal entries 
of my laziness. I think I can't stand the repe- 
tition of such records long. ... I may find 
some apology in the demi-wmter days, and in 
an influx of visiting friends in my new quar- 
ters — and be hanged to them — not the quar- 
ters, but the friends." . . . 

October 1, 1855. " Pepperell. I shall have 
at least the sense of sweet security from friends 
— the worst foes to time." 

The kindest and most considerate of men, 
Prescott inherited much of the active philan- 
thropy of his mother. He was interested in 
many public charities. Particularly to the 
Perkins Institution for the Blind did he give 



PERSONAL TRAITS 185 

time and money. " Much occupied the iast ten 
days with the affairs of the Blind," is an entry 
of May 9, 1833, not without its pathetic sug- 
gestion. He had his private pensioners as well, 
some of whom were passed on to him, so to 
speak, from that lady bountiful, his mother. 
One of his secretaries tells us that he regularly 
gave away one tenth of his income. The latter 
was figured, in the late forties (of course, after 
his father had died), at upwards of $12,000 a 
year. It spelled luxury for the times. Pres- 
cott's methods in almsgiving were not always, 
one fears, such as would commend themselves 
to the Charity Organization Society. Here is 
a specimen of his minute accounts, written 
down after taking a walk : — 

" Apple 2 — newspaper 2 — gloves 1.00 — 
charity 25." During his stay in London he 
employed a valet, one Penn (" a Penn I will 
not cut," was his punning aside to his wife), 
who, he wrote home, would be " perfectly in- 
valuable if he did not drink, to which he has 
an amiable inclination." There is something 
human in the addition, " I will let him get 
drunk once before I part with him." 



186 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

Prescott's Boston home was for twenty-eight 
years with his father on Bedford Street. The 
house was spacious and the scene of warm hos- 
pitality. " Shall I ever forget," wrote Lady 
Lyell to Prescott in 1857, " the Thanksgiving 
in Bedford Street ? Never, as long as I live. 
It is now more than fifteen years ago, but still 
I see the rooms, the dinner table, the blind- 
man's-buff, and the adjournment to your study 
to see Lord Kingsborough's ' Mexico.' ' After 
Judge Prescott's death, the son bought, in 1845, 
the house on Beacon Street, No. 55, where the 
remainder of his life was passed. A vivid re- 
minder of the changes which time has brought 
in the city's topography may be had from a 
descriptive sentence of Prescott's own : " My 
house is in Beacon Street looking on the Com- 
mon, which is an uncommonly fine situation, 
commanding a noble view of land and water.'* 

But he never passed the entire twelvemonth 
in the city. Indeed, his personal preference 
would appear to have been for life in the coun- 
try throughout the year. " I have found the 
country favorable to industry, health, and gen- 
eral cheerfulness." 



PERSONAL TRAITS 187 

October 6, 1844. " How much more correct 
is the estimate one makes of life and the ob- 
jects of life — of character and of pleasures, 
in the silent solitudes of the country, than in 
the bustling haunts and senseless hurly-burly 
of the city ! And with my contemplated pur- 
suits how much more congenial! Yet should 
I not be lonely without a family around 
me?" 

It was, in fact, the educational advantages 
for his children which the city could offer that 
turned the scale. Still he clung to the country 
for what he called his " chronic " residence, 
prolonging the season out of town. Besides 
the ancestral house at Pepperell, he had a 
cottage at Nahant where he used to spend the 
earlier summer months. About this home he 
had two minds. Sometimes it was a " para- 
dise." Again, when fogs and chill air made 
his rheumatism more acute, he was tempted to 
say that it should be " nae haunt of mine." 
Indeed, in the later years of his life, he gave 
up the site on the rocky promontory, and 
bought a house on the shore of Lynn Bay, six 
miles away. The many months thus passed 



188 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

by the sea probably account for the nautical 
metaphors frequent in Prescott's letters and 
journals ; but it does not appear that he 
was fond of sailing. His favorite exercise was 
walking and riding. At Nahant "Prescott's 
Walk " is still pointed out, and he used to 
do miles back and forth under the trees at 
Pepperell. Horseback riding he kept up with 
the utmost regularity. An entry in the 
journal shows the regimen of one who 
might have posed for Emerson's " athletic 
scholar." 

August 10, 1845. " Ride in saddle before 
breakfast, 1 1 h. Walk 1 h. at noon under my 
orchard shade. Drive 1^ h. in evening. Walk 
a mile. So, pretty fair for exercise." 

The historian's method of work has been 
described in preceding pages. It was imposed 
upon him through his having, like Thierry, to 
"make friends with darkness." One result 
was to develop an extraordinary power of 
memory. He not only composed while riding 
or walking, but carried whole pages, even 
chapters, in his head with verbal accuracy. 
He could even amend and alter as freely as if 



PERSONAL TRAITS 189 

the written page lay before him. What range 
and grasp his memory had at its prime may be 
inferred from knowing that, when on the third 
volume of "Philip II," he complained of the 
fact that he could not perfectly command more 
than forty printed pages as a proof of failing 
powers. At the time of his father's death he 
noted that the " shock " wiped out the pages 
he then had in mind " as completely as though 
with a sponge." His library and study were 
real workshops. A homely touch is given by 
one of his private secretaries, who tells us that 
twenty pairs of old shoes were piled on a step- 
ladder that stood in a corner. Prescott's jour- 
nal he kept largely out of methodic bent. But 
he once wrote in it : — 

June 28, 1849. " I have ever found it a 
great stimulus to industry to be able to talk 
thus to myself. But I cannot do this if there 
ig another looking over my shoulder — if I 
write for another to transcribe." 

And again : — 

" Let the entries be brief and practical, and 
set down naught from vanity, which would be 
very silly and misplaced here. Yet when will 



190 WILLIAM HICKL1NG PRESCOTT 

not that pitiful failing creep in ? Was there 
ever a creature too humble not to have some 
store of it ? " 

The admonitory entries are as thick in Pres- 
eott's diary as they were in Dr. Johnson's. 
One amusing resort of his to flog himself along 
was his habit of imposing a money forfeit upon 
the failure to complete a given task by a day 
fixed. This device he appears to have taken 
up while still in college. Very early in his 
journals we find traces of the custom. Thus 
one of his " Maxims of Composition " written 
down almost at the beginning reads : " Pay a 
forfeit if you read a word as you are writing 
it — if you look over the last 3 lines you have 
written, except it be impossible after trying 
to recollect them (you may at last 3 words), 
if you review any except 2 pages when I be- 
gin to write in the day. ... I may read what 
has been written on the same day in which I 
take this liberty, provided it shall be absolutely 
necessary to write further" Later, he com- 
muted his system of forfeits into a plan of 
making wagers (the odds heavily against him- 
self) with his private secretaries. A memo- 



PERSONAL TRAITS 191 

randum of one of them survives, and runs as 
follows : — 

"June 4 th 1846. This memorandum is to 
witness that a bet of one dollar to fifty dol- 
lars has been made between E. B. Otis and 
W^ H. Prescott Esq., the latter betting fifty 
dollars that he will read for, compose and 
write one hundred pages of his 'History of 
Peru' in a hundred days, the days to be 
counted from the fourth day of June, 1846, 
inclusive, making due allowance for the ex- 
cepted days hereinafter specified. 

" This bet shall be renewed at the end of 
the hundred days (the amount, conditions and 
exceptions of the second bet being the same 
in every particular with those herein recited) ; 
unless Mr. Prescott shall , within two days 
from the expiration of the first period of a 
hundred days, enter on this memorandum a 
written statement of his desire to dissolve the 
Bet. If the History, including the Postscripts, 
should not hold out, but should fall short of 
the second hundred pages, the wager shall be 
construed pro rata, that is, Mr. Prescott shall 
lose his second bet of fifty dollars unless he 



192 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

finishes the remainder of his History at the 
rate of a page a day, (reckoning the days from 
the expiration of the first hundred days) for 
every day after the determination of the first 
wager till the work is finished, with the follow- 
ing exceptions. 

" The days to be excepted when calculating 
the result of either bet are these, viz : 

" When Mr. Prescott is absent from town 
for a day or more, also a day before and after 
return, also two days must be allowed for 
moving to Nahant, to Boston and to Pepperell, 
— each ; or when prevented from study by the 
sickness of himself or friends for a day or 
more, or by the occurrence of any unforeseen 

(to be determined himself) also 

event A that might occupy him otherwise, A the 
days employed in writing the Memoir of Mr. 
Pickering ; (Writing letters is not an unfore- 
seen event ;) also the days that gentlemen vis- 
itors stay in the house with Mr. Prescott. No 
days shall be excepted but those herein speci- 
fied, and entered on this sheet. 

" Weakness of the eyes shall not count as 
illness unless upon such days as Mr. Prescott 



PERSONAL TRAITS 193 

cannot read himself 2 hours and has not his 

the latter, (when Mr. Prescott is unable to read said two hours) 

secretary with him, or A from any cause is un- 

Mr. Prescott 

able to read 3 hours on any day when A is not 
employed in composing text of a chapter and 
except working (not reading) causes pain. 

exclusive of reading 

" If working A causes pain for several days 
Mr. Prescott has a right to dissolve this agree- 
ment. 

" Signed June 4Q 

" W^ H. Prescott, 
" Edmund B. Otis. 
" I promise on my honor as a gentleman not 
to release Mr. Prescott from any forfeiture 
that he may incur by this engagement except 
in such cases as are provided for in the con- 
tract — this contract being made at his desire 
for his own accommodation solely. 

" Edmund B. Otis. 
"Days excepted — June 7-21, 25, 26, 28, 

July 6-14." 

Prescott always took this betting on his own 

industry with perfect seriousness. Sometimes 

he would radiantly greet his secretary with 

" You have lost ! You owe me a dollar." And 



194 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

he would exact payment. Occasionally lie would, 
with woebegone countenance, produce and pay 
over to the protesting secretary the twenty or 
thirty dollars he himself had lost. It was Pres- 
cott's one "oddity," according to a friend. 
Madame de Sevigne, who had a similar habit, 
called it a sottise. " Je reviens a nos lectures : 
c'est sans prejudice de Cleopatre [a romance 
in twelve octavo volumes] que j'ai gage d'ache- 
ver (vous savez comme je soutiens mes ga- 
geures) : je songe quelquef ois d'oii vient la folie 
que j'ai pour ces sottises-la." 

Three children survived Prescott. The 
happy marriage of his daughter Elizabeth to 
James Lawrence gave him much pleasure, 
though he wrote : " What shall I do with two 
nurseries — grandchildren and a' that?" His 
first daughter he lost in childhood. It was for 
this four-year-old Catherine that, at the end 
of one of his noctograph letters to his wife, 
written from Philadelphia, Prescott printed a 
sentence with most painstaking care : "I love 
little Kitty, and will buy her a work box in 
New York if she is a good girl." But on Feb- 
ruary 1, 1829, this eldest child died. The event 



PERSONAL TRAITS 195 

was, to her father, not only a source of pro- 
found sorrow, but the occasion of driving him 
to a close examination of the foundations of 
his religious faith. " The death of my dearest 
daughter," he wrote in his journal, "having 
made it impossible for me at present to resume 
the task of composition, I have been naturally 
led to more serious reflection than usual, and 
have occupied myself in reviewing the evidences 
of the Christian religion." To this work, with 
characteristic thoroughness, he devoted many 
weeks. In company with his father, "an old 
and cautious lawyer," he read thoroughly the 
various standard works on the Evidences, for 
and against. His conclusion was that the Gos- 
pel narratives were authentic, though he did 
not find in them the doctrines commonly ac- 
counted orthodox, and deliberately recorded 
his rejection of the dogmas of " eternal damna- 
tion, the Trinity, the Deity of Christ, Election 
and Original Sin." Theologically, therefore, 
he confirmed his belief in that more liberal 
form of Unitarianism in which he had been 
reared. Practically, he was one to make ob- 
servers say that his creed could n't be wrong, 



196 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

so reverent and pure was his life, and so filled 
with goodness. Yet it was this gentle and tol- 
erant man, abounding in all charity of thought 
and deed, whom a reviewer in the Baltimore 
" Catholic Magazine " dubbed a " bigot," while 
the Dublin " Quarterly Review " breathed a 
prayer for his " conversion from spiritual error." 
Prescott's sole comment in his journal was: 
" As I have always considered charity as the 
foundation of every honest creed, whether re- 
ligious or political, I don't believe I deserve 
the name of bigot." 



CHAPTER XV 

POLITICAL SYMPATHIES 

It was apropos of Prescott, I believe, that 
John Quincy Adams made the remark, "A 
great historian has neither politics nor re- 
ligion." He meant, of course, bias as a writer. 
But as regards politics, at any rate, it has 
been commonly thought that the saying was 
literally true of Prescott. Ticknor dismisses 
this aspect of the man in a cold sentence 
or two. Nor, in fact, did Prescott ever take 
such a close and keen interest in the pageant 
of present politics, which makes future history, 
as did, for example, that other historian, Dr. 
Thomas Arnold. Brought up a conservative 
Whig, and kept by physical limitations as 
well as by his chosen pursuits from the hurly- 
burly of actual participation in public affairs, 
it was only late in life that he gave evidence of 
being deeply stirred by the conflict of political 
doctrines which foreshadowed the Civil War. 



198 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

At once a test and illustration of his attitude 
we may see in his relations with Charles Sum- 
ner. Friends early and until parted by death, 
the two men had, at first, little in common, po- 
litically. Prescott had a great admiration for 
Sumner, and stood by him personally and 
socially when all blue-blooded Boston turned 
its very cold shoulder upon the man whose 
radicalism, Ticknor said, had placed him out- 
side "the pale of society." Apropos of this 
early obloquy, Prescott wrote to Sumner in 
1851, reminding him how Judge Story had 
suffered from " the bitterness of party feeling," 
and adding, " Boston is worse than New York 
in this respect." Yet Sumner understood per- 
fectly that Prescott did not go with him polit- 
ically. Writing to Lord Morpeth in 1847, he 
said, " Prescott shakes his head because I have 
anything to do with the thing [slavery]. His 
insensibility to it is a perfect bathos. This is 
wrong : I wish you would jar him a little on 
this side." Yet it was only six years later, 
when Sumner made his great speech in the 
Senate on the repeal of the Missouri Compro- 
mise, that Prescott wrote, " I don't see but 



POLITICAL SYMPATHIES 199 

what all Boston has got round; in fact, we 
must call Sumner the Massachusetts Senator." 
Brooks's assault on Sumner roused Prescott 
as no display of the slavery spirit had before 
done. " You have escaped the crown of mar- 
tyrdom," he wrote to his friend, " by a narrow 
chance, and have got all the honors, which are 
almost as dangerous to one's head as a gutta- 
percha cane. There are few in old Massachu- 
setts, I can assure you, who do not feel that 
every blow on your cranium was a blow on 
them." And when the Senator returned to 
receive the homage of Boston, Prescott and his 
family waved a welcome to him, as the proces- 
sion passed, from the balcony of their Beacon- 
Street house. Calling on Sumner the next 
day, the historian told him that if he had 
known there were to be decorations and in- 
scriptions on the houses he should have placed 
on his own these words : — 

" May 22, 1856. 

" ■ Then I, and you, and all of us fell down, 
Whilst bloody treason flourish'd over us.' " 

Sumner, on his part, was loyalty itself to the 
man with whom, as he testified, his relations 



200 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

"had for years been of peculiar intimacy." 
" This death," he wrote to Longfellow, when, in 
France, he heard of Prescott's end, "touches 
me much. Perhaps no man, so much in peo- 
ple's mouths, was ever the subject of so little 
unkindness. Something of that immunity which 
he enjoyed in life must be referred to his 
beautiful nature, in which enmity could not 
live." To the widow, five years later, Sumner 
wrote, on occasion of the publication of Tick- 
nor's " Life of Prescott : " " The past has been 
revived. ... 1 have felt keenly how much I 
was permitted to enjoy and how much I have 
lost. Those evenings in the darkened room in 
Bedford Street, with the kind, sparkling, in- 
timate talk on books, history, friends abroad 
and at home; the pleasant suppers below, 
where were the venerable parents, so good and 
cordial ; then as I became absorbed in public 
affairs, the constant friendship which we main- 
tained ; the welcome he always gave me on 
my return from Washington; our free con- 
versations on public affairs and public men; 
and perhaps more than all things else his 
tender sympathy as he sat by my bedside, 



POLITICAL SYMPATHIES 201 

revealing how his heart was moved, only a 
short time before the summons came to himself 
— all these I think of, and in selfish sorrow I 
grieve that he is gone." 

To piece out the account of Prescott's polit- 
ical associations and gradual change of view, 
the testimony of his private secretary, Mr. 
Robert Carter, may be cited. Speaking of their 
first acquaintance (1847), he wrote, "He was 
a Conservative Whig as I a Free Soiler." 
But he adds, " Ten years later, I had the plea- 
sure of knowing that he voted for Fremont for 
President, and for Burlingame for Congress, 
notwithstanding his high personal esteem for 
his friend and neighbor, Mr. Appleton, the 
candidate opposed to Burlingame." It would 
be a mistake to class Prescott among abolition- 
ists, or even as pronounced against the aggres- 
sions of slavery ; but that his nature did not 
fail to thrill under the indignities heaped upon 
the free North, is made manifest in a letter 
which he wrote to an Englishwoman in 1854 : — 

" We have had most alarming doings here 
lately in the fugitive slave line. ... A regi- 
ment of the militia was called out, the streets 



202 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

in certain quarters were closed against passen- 
gers, and swords and muskets were flashing in 
our eyes as if we had been in a state of siege. 
" I am rather of the conservative order, you 
know, but I assure you it made my blood boil 
to see the good town placed under martial law 
so unceremoniously for no other purpose than 
to send back a runaway negro to his master. 
It is a disagreeable business at any time, and 
it was only a strong conviction of the claims 
which the South had on us by virtue of the 
Constitution, which made us one nation, that 
induced our people to sign the famous Com- 
promise act of 1850. But the Nebraska Bill 
looks to us so much like double dealing in the 
matter that there is now a great apathy in 
regard to our enforcing our own part of the 
contract. Then the thing was carried here with 
such a rash hand. The town was turned over to 
the military by the mayor. . . . Every petty 
captain of a militia corps was left to act at 
his own discretion. In one case the guns were 
leveled to fire on the multitude without any 
notice to warn the people of the danger ; and 
it was by a mere accident that ^ bloody fray 



POLITICAL SYMPATHIES 203 

did not take place, which, if once begun, would 
have put us in mourning for many a day. Old 
Boston has rather a relish for rebellion, and 
when it lay in the path, as it seemed to do 
here, it required some restraining grace not to 
pick it up. ... I am told the government 
was quite willing we should dip our fingers in 
rebellion. It knows it cannot have any sup- 
port, and for that reason would be very glad 
to put us in the wrong with the rest of the 
country. The Nebraska business has called up 
a feeling which, though not Free Soil, or Aboli- 
tionist, is so near akin to them that they can 
all work in the same harness." 

It is, in truth, in Prescott's English corre- 
spondence that we find the workings of his 
mind on American politics most clearly re- 
vealed. At one time, he is enlisting the sym- 
pathies and receiving the contributions of 
English friends in behalf of a slave — pre- 
sumably a fugitive. At another, he is discuss- 
ing with the Duke of Argyll or with Lord 
Morpeth the fatal drift of slavery towards the 
extinction of human rights. Not immediately 
upon these themes, but on others which, after 



204 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

all, were kindred with them, a couple of un- 
published letters are of interest : — 



TO R. C. WINTHROP 

May 30, 1847. 
Everything has gone well for you here, no 
extra session of Congress, and none like to be. 
We ride on conquering and to conquer, as you 
see, up to the very Halls of Montezuma, and 
many, I should think from the positive manner 
they speak of them, expect to find the palace 
of the old Aztec still standing. The Mexicans 
have missed it in fighting pitched battles in- 
stead of trusting to a guerilla warfare. My 
friend, General Miller, who has much expe- 
rience of the Spanish- American character, told 
me that the guerilla was the only way by 
which they could fight us with success ; and if 
they pursued that system they would be invin- 
cible. They may trouble us yet in that way ; 
but the capital and seaports seem destined to 
come into our hands. But what shall we do 
with them ? It will be a heavy drag on our 
republican car, and the Creole blood will not 
mix well with the Anglo-Saxon. Then there 



POLITICAL SYMPATHIES 205 

will be the slavery question as a firebrand 
which will keep you hot enough next winter 
in the Capitol. 

TO C. CUSHING 

Boston, April 3, 1848. 

My deak Sir, — I should sooner have 
thanked you for your friendly letter from the 
environs of Mexico. You are in a position for 
an accurate comprehension of my narrative 
and the subject of it. And I shall be very glad 
if the result does not lead to the detection 
of greater inaccuracies than those you have 
pointed out. 

You have closed a campaign as brilliant as 
that of the great conquistador himself , though 
the Spaniards have hardly maintained the re- 
putation of their hardy ancestors. The second 
conquest would seem a priori to be a matter 
of as much difficulty as the first, considering 
the higher civilization and military science of 
the races who now occupy the coimtry, but it 
has not proved so, — and my readers, I am 
afraid, will think I have been bragging too 
much of the valor of the old Spaniard. 



206 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

I hope we shall profit by the temporary pos- 
session of the capital to discover some of the 
Aztec monuments and MSS. The Spanish ar- 
chives everywhere, both public and those be- 
longing to private families in Old Spain and 
in the colonies, are rich in MSS., which are 
hoarded up from the eye of the scholar as care- 
fully as if they were afraid of the facts coming 
to light. Of late these collections have been 
somewhat opened in the Peninsula. But such 
repositories must exist in Mexico, and Senor 
Alaman, formerly minister of foreign affairs, 
has communicated some to me and made liberal 
use of others in his own publications. If you 
meet with him you will see one of the most 
accomplished and clever men in Mexico. But 
I hear he was in disgrace a year since from 
his royalist predilections. Could you oblige 
me by saying to him if you meet him, that I 
am very desirous to send him my " Conquest 
of Peru," and if he can let me know how to 
do so I shall do it at once with great pleasure. 
Have you met on the spot any of the Mexican 
translations of my "Mexico"? The third vol- 
ume of one of them contains and is filled with 



POLITICAL SYMPATHIES 207 

engravings taken from old pictures of the time 
of the Conquest, at least so it purports. This 
edition alone contains also some very learned 
and well-considered criticism on different pas- 
sages of the work. I trust that your military 
duties and dangers are now at an end, and 
that Mexico will accept our propositions for 
peace. It has been a war most honorable to 
our arms, as all must admit, whatever we may 
think of the wisdom of the counsels that rushed 
us into it* 



CHAPTER XVI 

"PHILIP II" 

" You have had," wrote Dean Milman to 
Prescott, in 1852, "I will not say the good 
fortune, rather the judgment to choose noble 
subjects." This was in connection with a 
friendly inquiry how Philip II was getting on. 
That last, and as it proved, unfinished work, 
if it had a noble subject, was the occasion of 
revealing nobility in the author. As the " Con- 
quest of Peru " links Prescott' s name with 
Markham, the « Philip II " does with Motley. 
The story is well known. Motley made grate- 
ful public acknowledgment of the generous en- 
couragement and sympathy which he received 
from the older historian. Going to him with 
a proposal to abandon the field in which the 
younger man had not known that Prescott was 
working, the beginner was rather urged warmly 
to continue his own researches, and was offered 
every aid, including the loan of books and 



PHILIP II 209 

manuscripts, within the power of the writer of 
established reputation. It was a fine example 
of passing on the torch of learning. As Mot- 
ley wrote appreciatively to Prescott from Paris, 
in 1857, it was only a proof of the latter's 
" untiring benevolence." He had previously 
written from Florence, in 1855 : — 

" I thank you very much for your very 
handsome allusion [in the Preface to " Philip 
II " ] to my forthcoming work which I am sure 
in America at least will be of much value to 
me. I hope you will take the trouble to read 
the work when it appears (a copy will of course 
be sent you) and that you will not be ashamed 
afterwards of having complimented me on 
trust. It is so much the fashion for literary 
men and artists generally to look upon any 
man in the street who is trying to get into the 
omnibus as an intruder, and to bully him with 
assurances that there is no room for him, that 
I feel most sensibly your courtesy in trying to 
make a place for me at your side, however, un- 
able or unworthy I may be of your kindness." 

Prescott came early to have a high estimate 
of Motley's powers. In a letter to Allibone, 



210 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

referring to one " whose path crosses my own 
historic field," he said, " I can honestly bear 
my testimony to the extent of his researches ; " 
and added, with a touch of genuine criticism, 
" every page is instinct with the love of free- 
dom." One recalls Motley's letter to his father, 
expressing the patriotic satisfaction it gave 
him to "pitch into the Duke of Alva and 
Philip Second to my heart's content." Two 
such differing natures as Prescott's and 
Motley's excellently illustrate the personal 
equation in the writing as well as the reading 
of history. Dr. Holmes observed : " Those 
who have known Motley and Prescott would 
feel sure beforehand that the impulsive nature 
of the one and the judicial serenity of the other 
would as surely betray themselves in their writ- 
ings as in their conversation and in their every 
movement." Motley himself shrewdly remarked 
on this diversity of temperament in writing to 
Prescott about the first volume of "Philip 
II:" — 

"I think there can be no doubt of the suc- 
cess of the work and that it will stand as high 
as (or even higher than) any of your other 



PHILIP II 211 

histories. I can vouch for its extraordinary- 
accuracy both of narration and of portrait 
painting. You do not look at people or events 
from my point of view, but I am therefore a 
better witness as to your fairness and clearness 
of delineation and statement. You have by 
nature the judicial mind, which is the costume 
de rigueur of all historians. JVon equidem 
invideo miror magis — for I have n 't the 
least of it — I am always in a passion when I 
write and so shall be accused — very justly 
perhaps — of the qualities for which Byron 
commended Mitford, 'wrath and partiality.' 
Thus far you are very just to my idol, Wil- 
liam the Silent, a man whom it has been the 
fashion for Catholic and Calvinist canters to 
blacken for three centuries. Pray don't rely, 
by the way, too much on Groen van Prin- 
sterer's good opinion of Philip II. He is more 
of a Jesuit than Father Strada, and a Cal- 
vinist monk is the most mischievous of all. 
Cucullus non facit) etc. I allude of course 
to his opinion of Philip himself — not your 
history of him, which I feel sure that he will 
appreciate as highly as it deserves. I earnestly 



212 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

hope that you will have plenty of time and 
health and eyesight to go on with the succeed- 
ing volumes of your history, and do not doubt 
that they will be as brilliant and as masterly 
as these two. No one will welcome the follow- 
ing ones more than I shall do." 

Professor Allen of Wisconsin University 
thought that Prescott was somewhat " lacking 
in indignation." He could not rival Motley 
in pitching into Philip. His own Philip was 
voted by Sir William Stirling-Maxwell to be, 
so Motley wrote to his wife, " altogether too 
mild and flattered a portraiture of that odious 
personage." On the other hand, Prescott 
thought Motley too hard on Philip. This ap- 
pears in the letter which he wrote to the author 
of the " Dutch Kepublic " in April, 1856 : — 

Boston, April 28, 1856. 
My dear Motley, — I am much obliged 
to you for the copy of the " History of the 
Dutch Kepublic " which you have been so kind 
as to send me. A work of that kind is not 
to be run through in a few days, particularly 
by one who does his reading chiefly through 



PHILIP II 213 

his ears. I shall take my own time therefore 
for going thoroughly through the book, which 
I certainly shall do from beginning to end, 
notes inclusive. Meantime I have yielded to 
my impatience of seeing what sort of stuff it 
is made of by pitching here and there into 
various places, particularly those with which 
I am most familiar myself and which would 
be most likely to try your power as a writer. 
The result of a considerable amount of read- 
ing in this way has satisfied me that you 
have more than fulfilled the prediction which 
I had made respecting your labors to the pub- 
lic. Everywhere you seem to have gone into 
the subject with a scholar-like thoroughness 
of research, furnishing me on my own beaten 
track with a quantity of new facts and views, 
which I was not aware it could present to 
the reader. In one passage I remember, the 
sack of St. Quentin, you give a variety of 
startling and very interesting particulars, and 
when I envied you the resources at your com- 
mand for supplying them to you, I found they 
were all got from a number of the " Docu- 
mentos Ineditos" which slept harmlessly on 



214 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

my shelves from my own unconsciousness that 
it contained anything germane to the mat- 
ter. Your descriptions are everywhere graphic 
and picturesque. One familiar with your ro- 
mances will not be surprised at your powers 
in this way. But yet, after all, the style for 
history is as different from what is required 
for romance as that of a great historical picture 
is from a scene painting for a theatre. You 
prove that you possess both. Your portraiture 
of character is vigorous and animated, full of 
characteristic touches, from a pencil that is 
dipped in the colors of the old masters. 

You have laid it on Philip rather hard. 
Indeed you have whittled him down to such 
an imperceptible point that there is hardly 
enough of him left to hang a newspaper para- 
graph on, much less five or six volumes of solid 
history, as I propose to do. But then you 
make it up with your own hero, William of 
Orange, and I comfort myself with the reflec- 
tion that you are looking through a pair of 
Dutch spectacles after all. As to the back- 
bone of the work, the unfolding of the great 
revolution, I am not in a condition to criticise 



PHILIP II 215 

that, as no one can be who has not read the 
work carefully through. But I have conversed 
with several, not merely your personal friends, 
who have done so, and they bear emphatic 
testimony to the power you have exhibited, in 
presenting the subject in an original and 
piquant way to the reader. Indeed you have 
seen enough of criticism, probably, from the 
presses of this country and of England, to sat- 
isfy you that the book has made a strong 
impression upon the public mind and that it 
must be entirely successful. There is one little 
matter which I have heard quarreled with, and 
which I must say I think is a mistake, but 
which relates to the form not to the fonds of 
the work — that is, the headings of the chap- 
ters and the running titles of the pages. They 
are so contrived as to show the author's wit, 
but nothing of the contents of the book, and 
have the disadvantage of giving a romantic 
air which is out of place in history. 

But this sort of criticism you may very 
well think is like praising one for his intellec- 
tual, his moral [qualities], and all that, and 
then taking exception to the cut of his waist- 



216 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

coat. You have good reason to be pleased with 
the reception the book has had from the Eng- 
lish press, considering that you had no one 
particularly to stand godfather to your bant- 
ling, but that it tumbled into the world almost 
without the aid of a midwife. Under these cir- 
cumstances success is a great triumph. . . . 

With my kindest regards to your wife, be- 
lieve me, dear Motley, 

Very sincerely yours, 

Wm. H. Prescott. 

Like all Prescott's histories, "Philip II" 
was long meditated. As early as December 6, 
1845, his journal betrays incidentally where 
his thoughts were turning. " I have the great 
reign of Philip the Prudent to prosecute." 
This was while the " Conquest of Peru " was 
still in hand, and was adduced as one spur 
more to press him on to its conclusion. Later 
entries yield glimpses of the progress of the 
work : — 

March 1, 1848. ..." Being thus relieved 
of all further solicitude in respect to the suc- 
cess of my last historical bantling, what re- 



PHILIP II 217 

mained for me but to turn at once to my rich 
mine of ' Philip II ' ? " . . . 

May 20, 1848. "Bead carefully Ticknor's 
MS. ' History of Spanish Literature' — a most 
thorough, scholar-like performance and impor- 
tant contribution to letters. Read also — i. e. 
listened to — an ocean of newspapers — the 
staple of the day — the age of revolutions. 
What next?" . . . 

September 9, 1848. " [Pepperell.] Now 
cannot I Philippize in these shades ? " . . . 

October 27, 1848. "The last three weeks 
have been lounging through the purlieus of 
my subject. Is it to be mine ? " . « . 

February 15, 1849. " I must economize time 
by taking only the best authorities and the 
MSS. The last I must approfondir — the true 
ammunition for the historian to fight his paper 
battles with. ... If I do not make sensible 
progress, I shall have no heart to go on at 
all. After skimming along on a railroad as 
I did in 'Peru,' how can I feel enthusiasm 
when limping like a blind beggar on foot ? I 
must make my brains — somehow or other — 
save my eyes and my time too." . . . 



218 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

September 2, 1849. "Never so happy as 
when fairly under weigh in composing. . . . 
One great drag on me is the pain writing 
occasions in the urethra, etc. . . . But par 
zienza — I must learn that at least from my 
Spaniard." 

November 25, 1849. " Mem. Whining 
about my troubles unmans me, and is of itself 
the worst augury. Making light of these — 
quiet energy, justifiable self-reliance, cheerful 
views of life are the best guarantees of success 
as I have hitherto succeeded. I will." 

September 14, 1851. " I have no right at 
fifty-five to say solve senescentem equum. I 
have still a course to run over, and a good 
plate to win * . . even though I have a touch 
of the blind staggers." . . . 

October 14, 1851. " I now enter on . . . 
the story of the Netherlands, — a fit subject 
for an independent history, as Motley will 
show the world before my limping volumes 
come out." . . . 

July 4, 1852. "Letter just received from 
Bentley begs me to fix a time for its [my work] 
publication, but I cannot consent to become 



PHILIP II 219 

the slave of the lamp — and of the publishers — 
as that would make me." . . . 

" Left Nahant Sept. 6th, and came to the 
Highlands September 9, full of good intent. 
Delicious solitudes ; safe even from friends — 
for a time ! Now for the Spanish battle-cry, 
1 St. Jago, and at them ! ' ... 

December 4, 1852. " St. Jago has not done 
much for me after all. The gods won't help 
those that won't help themselves. I have daw- 
dled away my summer, and have only to show 
for it Chapter XII, thirty-five pages of text, 
and four pages of notes. Fie on it ! I am now 
well read up for Chapter XIII, and — I mean 
to have a conscience and reform. We left Pep- 
perell for town, Oct. 26th." ... 

February 2, 1853. " The reign of terror — 
I must not go to sleep over it — nor let my 
readers." . . . 

March 20, 1853. " The last week revived 
the industry of the Peruvian — the golden 
age." . . . 

July 30, 1853. " Yesterday fell asleep while 
Kirk read it [Chapter XVIII] to me for cor- 
rections. A good omen for my readers. . . • 



220 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

Now for that exacting old dame, the Muse of 
History — who will not go halves with any- 
body." 

The question of foreign copyright assumed 
some importance for Prescott on the eve of 
publishing his " Philip II." Motley, discuss- 
ing with his father the wisdom of taking out an 
English copyright, wrote that, " It may be 
well for Mr. Prescott to do so, as he can sell 
his books for £1000 a volume or more." On 
September 14, 1851, Prescott noted: "The 
late decision in favor of foreign copyright ap- 
peals to my avarice, if my ambition should go 
to sleep ; for it will put some thousands into 
my pocket." But later this hope was dashed, 
and he wrote : — 

August 22, 1854. " In May, an English pub- 
lisher, Routledge, made me the offer of <£1000 
a volume for as many volumes, not exceeding 
six, as I should write of ' Philip II ' in case I 
could give him a good copyright ; that is, if 
the case before the House of Lords on appeal 
should be decided in favor of foreigners. If 
decided against them, he agreed to pay me 
,£500 a volume for these two first volumes, and 



PHILIP II 221 

£250 for each of the following — for the ad- 
vance sheets — I was to be allowed to propose 
these terms to Bentley — first, which I did, and 
they were at once accepted. The late decision 
in the House of Lords has gone against the 
right of foreigners, and all my dreams of copy- 
right and all the title by which Bentley has 
hitherto had an exclusive copyright in my 
books have vanished into air. The sum, how- 
ever, I am to receive for priority of publication 
is more in the case of the two first volumes 
than he paid me for the copyright of the two 
volumes of ' Peru.' . . . I have quitted the Har- 
pers, and entered into a contract with the house 
of Phillips, Sampson & Co. of Boston. I have 
left the Harpers not from any dissatisfaction 
with them, for they have dealt well by me from 
the first to the last, but because they were not 
prepared to come up to the liberal offer made 
by the other party. We part, therefore, with 
the same good understanding in which we have 
always kept together. ... I am to receive 
$6000 for each of the vols, of that work. 
. . . Also agree to pay me 16000 a year for 
six consecutive years for the right to publish 



222 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

3000 copies of each of my former historical 
works." 

The first two volumes of " Philip II " were 
completed on August 22, 1854. On that date 
we find the customary Laus Deo in the jour- 
nal. The composition, Prescott notes, had oc- 
cupied him about five years. " I thought of 
calling the work Memoirs, and treating the 
subject in a more desultory and superficial 
manner than belongs to a regular history. I 
did not go to work in a businesslike style till 
I broke ground on the troubles of the Nether- 
lands. Perhaps my critics may find this out." 
The usual task of revision and printing kept 
him busy for a year more. " Nothing remains 
now but to correct the earlier portions of the 
work, especially those relating to Charles the 
Fifth, in which all my new things have been 
forestalled since I began to write by Mignet, 
Stirling, etc., — a warning to procrastinating 
historians." The volumes were published in 
November, 1855. The result was a renewal 
and even enlargement of former successes. His 
own record, six months after publication, best 
tells the story : — 



PHILIP II 223 

"A settlement made with my publishers 
here last week enables me to speak of the suc- 
cess of the work. In England it has been pub- 
lished in four separate editions ; one of them 
from the rival house of Eoutledge. It has been 
twice reprinted in Germany, and a Spanish 
translation of it is now in course of publica* 
tion at Madrid. In this country eight thou- 
sand copies have been sold, while the sales of 
the preceding works have been so much im- 
proved by the impulse received from this, that 
nearlyTthirty thousand volumes of them have 
been disposed of by my Boston publishers, 
from whom I have received seventeen thou- 
sand dollars for the 'Philip' and the other 
works the last six months. So much for the 
lucre ! 

" From the tone of the foreign journals and 
those of my own country, it would seem that 
the work has found quite as much favor as any 
of its predecessors, and, as the sales have been 
much greater than of any other of them in 
the same space of time, I may be considered to 
have as favorable a breeze to carry me forward 
on my long voyage as I could desire. This is 



224 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

very important to me, as I felt a little nervous 
in regard to the reception of the work, after 
so long an interval since the preceding one 
had appeared." 

Intercalated between the first two volumes 
and the third of " Philip II " came Prescott's 
continuation of Robertson's " Charles the 
Fifth." This was a sort of compromise. Pres- 
cott had been urged to undertake an entire 
work of his own on the reign of Charles. But 
his mind was filled with Philip ; he did not de- 
sire to seem to be supplanting Robertson ; and 
so he pitched upon a new conclusion of the lat- 
ter' s work, bringing it into harmony with the 
latest researches and at the same time furnish- 
ing an introduction to his own volumes on 
Philip. This labor he went through with his 
habitual fidelity, spending more than a year on 
the hundred and eighty pages. To Ticknor he 
wrote on December 8, 1856 : — 

" My ' Charles the Fifth,' or rather Robert- 
son's, with my Continuation, made his bow to 
the public to-day, like a strapping giant with 
a little urchin holding on to the tail of his coat. 
I can't say I expect much from it, as the best 



f 



PHILIP II 225 

and biggest part is somewhat of the oldest. 
But people who like a complete series will 
need it to fill up the gap betwixt ' Ferdinand ' 
and ' Philip.' " 

An extract or two from his diary may be 
appended : — 

August 6, 1855. "I am getting rather an 
ambling gait — as the papers called my gait 
in the streets — not even the .butter-woman's 
trot to market. Fie on it ! " . . . 

October 28, 1855. " Boston is not Pepperell. 
The first day I dined with a large party. The 
second, at the theatre with Mile. Eachel till 
midnight. This is not the way they lived at 
Yuste." . . . 

June 4, 1857. " Kebellion of the Moriscoes, 
making in all 289 pages — more than half a 
volume ! As bad as Macaulay — without his 
merits to redeem it." . . . 

June 16, 1857. "Finished Battle of Le- 
panto. I hope it will smell of the ocean." . . . 

September 27, 1857. " The subject will be 
a hard one. For it is easier to discuss battles 
than politics." 

" Philip II " brought Prescott a full chorus 



226 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

of praise. He was most touched, as before, by 
the appreciation of foreign scholars. Hallam 
and Milman and Macaulay sent warm congrat- 
ulations. Sumner wrote from Aix-les-Bains : — 

September 15, 1858. 
. . . One day as I was halting through the 
street I observed a Frenchman busily occupied, 
as he walked, with a book which I recognized 
at once as one of your volumes. You know I 
am far-sighted, and easily recognize a friend. 
That incident made my walk pleasant, and I 
forgot my hurts. 

From Castle Howard, his friend, Lord Car- 
lisle, wrote : — 

September 13, 1858. 

. . . You are a brave fellow to stick to Philip, 
and I rejoice on every account to hear of such 
being your intention. I have had much plea- 
sure this year in making Mr. Motley's acquaint- 
ance, but I wish to ask you confidentially 
whether you think he has been poaching at all 
on your manor ? 



PHILIP II 227 

The best answer to this question, and the 
best way of closing a chapter in which, both 
at the end and the beginning, Motley's name 
should go with Prescott's, is to quote the 
explanation which the author of the " Dutch 
Republic " gave to his father : — 

Vevey, March 3, 1855. 

We [Prescott and Motley] had a perfect 
understanding about our respective plans be- 
fore I went away. I remember that he thought 
that it might be better if we should arrange to 
publish at somewhat different times, as the 
works are a good deal upon the same subject. 
As this is a consideration, however, which only 
affects me, as my work can't interfere with the 
sale of his, I have never thought it a matter 
of great consequence, particularly as I don't 
know, and never shall know, when I ought to 
publish. . . . 

Philip the Second, although he is, of course, 
the Deus ex machina in much of my present 
work, is not my head devil. 

I still mean to write to Mr. Prescott, but I 
thought I would send him this message through 



228 WILLIAM H1CKL1NG PRESCOTT 

you, for I would not have him think me forget- 
ful of the many acts of kindness and friend- 
ship which I have received at his hands, and 
it is possible that he might wish to hear my 
plans. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE UNFINISHED WINDOW 

Opening, in 1858, a new volume of the journal 
which he had kept for more than forty years, 
Prescott wrote on the inside of the cover, 
"Literary Memorandum Book No XIV — 
and, as I eschew long entries, probably the 
last." Less than three pages were actually 
written. The last entry of all was this : — 

Pepperell, October 28. " Return to town 
to-morrow. The country is now in its splendid 
autumn robe, somewhat torn, however, and 
draggled by the rain. Have been occupied 
with corrections and additions to my ' Mexico/ 
On my return to Boston shall resume my 
labors on i Philip,' and, if my health continues 
as good as it has been this summer, shall hope 
to make some progress. But I shall not press 
matters. Our villegiatura has been bright- 
ened by the presence of all the children and 
grandchildren, God bless them ! And now we 
scatter again, but not far apart." 



230 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

Prescott always labored under a physical 
handicap. In addition to his major disability, 
rheumatism seldom left off plaguing him. But 
there was, as an intimate friend noted, "a 
stoical element" in this gentle and smiling 
man, and he could whip a reluctant body along. 
A persistent local pain compelled him at one 
period to do a good deal of writing in a kneel- 
ing posture. The first really serious warning, 
however, came to him on February 4, 1858, 
when he suffered a slight stroke of apoplexy. 
He lost the power of speech for a time, and 
partly lost consciousness. His first articulate 
words disclosed the self -forgetful man : " My 
poor wife! I am so sorry for you, that this 
has come upon you so soon ! " But the attack 
passed off, and his strength slowly returned. 
His own record of the affair was under date of 
April 18, and was as follows : — 

"On the 4th of February I had a slight 
apoplectic shock, which affected both sight 
and power of motion, the last but for a few 
moments. 

" The attack — so unexpected, though I had 
been troubled with headaches through the 



THE UNFINISHED WINDOW 231 

winter, in a less degree, however, than in the 
preceding year — caused great alarm to my 
friends at first. Much reason have I to be 
grateful that the effects have gradually disap- 
peared, and left no traces now, except a slight 
obscurity in the vision, and a certain degree of 
weakness, which may perhaps be imputable to 
my change of diet. For I have been obliged 
to exchange my carnivorous propensities for 
those of a more innocent and primitive nature, 
picking up my fare as our good parents did 
before the fall. In this way it is thought I 
may defy the foul fiend for the future. But I 
must not make too heavy or long demands on 
the cranium, and if I can get three or four 
hours' work on my historic ground in a day, I 
must be content . . . With prudence and the 
blessing of Heaven I may hope still to be in at 
the death of Philip, though it may be some 
years later than I had expected." 

The rest of his life was passed in some- 
thing of a shadow, though he never lost his 
light vivacity. How he could jest at his own 
wounds appears in this extract from a letter to 
his friend of many years, Madame Calderon. 



232 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

Writing from Lynn on September 7, 1858, he 
said : — 

" For myself, I have been very well of late, 
though, during the last winter, in February, I 
experienced, what was little expected, an apo- 
plectic attack. It alarmed my friends a good 
deal, and frightened me out of my wits for a 
time. But the effects have gradually passed 
off, leaving me only a slight increase of the 
obscurity in my vision. As I don't intend the 
foul fiend shall return again, I live upon vege- 
tables and farinaceous matter, like the ancho- 
rites of old* For your apoplexy is a danger- 
ous fellow, who lives upon good cheer, fat and 
red-faced gentlemen, who feed upon something 
better than beets and carrots. I don't care 
about the fare, but I should be sorry not to 
give the last touches to 4 Philip the Prudent,' 
and to leave him in the world in a dismembered 
condition ! " 

To his daughter-in-law he wrote in comic 
deprecation of his vegetarian regimen ; one 
recalls Tennyson on FitzGerald's fare : — 

"I must expect a little debility, as they 
have brought me to an anchorite diet of vege- 



THE UNFINISHED WINDOW 233 

tables and the running brook, and I feel as 
light as air. These are not to be despised, are 
they ? And I expect to become quite an epi- 
cure in spinach and potatoes. Nothing can 
exceed the bounty of my friends who send me 
all kinds of slops and hasty puddings, and vol- 
umes of receipts for different sorts of dainties 
in this way. I had no idea of the wealth of 
the vegetable kingdom." 

With slackened, though never abandoned, 
researches in preparation for another volume 
on " Philip II," but with lowered vitality, he 
entered upon 1859. The closest observation 
foresaw no collapse. Ticknor, who, in 1855, 
had predicted that Prescott had "20 good years 
of work in him at 59," wrote to Hon. Edward 
Twistleton, on January 18, 1859, "Prescott 
is looking as well as ever, and his constitution 
has accommodated itself with wonderful alac- 
rity to the vegetable diet prescribed for him 
eleven months ago." Yet the end was but ten 
days away. On January 28, parting with his 
wife in merry laughter, he went into his study. 
The blow fell swiftly ; he was heard groaning ; 
was found absolutely unconscious ; and died in 



234 WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT 

a few hours. As grieving Motley wrote, " The 
night of time had suddenly descended upon the 
unfinished peristyle of a stately and beautiful 
temple." 

Before burial, the body of Prescott was 
taken, in accordance with a request he had 
made, to lie for a time in his library. The best 
of all ages looked down upon him from their 
books; but not one of those "lettered dead" 
was manlier or purer than he. " All who knew 
him," said George Bancroft, "will say that 
he was greater and better than his writings. 
Standing by his grave, we cannot recall any- 
thing in his manner, his character, his endow- 
ments, or his conduct we could wish changed." 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Aspinwall, Colonel, letter 
to, 25. 

Bancroft, George, letter from, 
129 ; reports English opin- 
ion, 146 ; on Prescott's char- 
acter, 234. 

Bancroft, H. H., estimate of 
44 Conquest of Mexico," 143. 

Brown, Charles Brockden, 
Life of, 70. 

Carlisle, Lord, letter from, 
226. 

Carter, Robert, Prescott's 
secretary, 35, 37, 201. 

Club-Room, 59-63. 

44 Conquest of Mexico " : first 
conception of, 132 ; Irving 
surrenders topic, 133-135; 
record of work on, 135, 136 ; 
W. H. P.'s comments on, 
137-139 ; pecuniary results, 
140, 141 ; viewed in modern 
light, 142 ; H. H. Bancroft's 
estimate of, 143. 

44 Conquest of Peru " : rapidly 
written, 152; 44 second- 
rate " subject, 154 ; pub- 
lished, 156 ; bookselling 
details, 156, 157; C. R. 
Markham's verdict on, 158. 

Curtis, G. T., characterizes 
Prescott, 173. 

Cushing, C, letter to, 205. 

Edgeworth, Maria, supposes 
W. H. P. blind, 26; ad- 
miration for Prescott, 110 ; 
letter from, 111 ; extract of 
letter from, 146. 



Eliot, Samuel, on Prescott, 

176 seq. 
Everett, A. H., letter to, 30. 
Everett, Edward, letter from, 

25. 

Felton, Professor C. C, on 
Prescott's simplicity, 178. 

44 Ferdinand and Isabella" : 
first germ of, 77 ; choice of, 
78 ; ten years' labor, 81, 84 ; 
finished, 84 ; motives for 
publishing, 84, 85 ; W. H. 
P.'s reflections on, 85, 86; 
published in Boston, 88 ; 
published in London, 89; 
pecuniary results, 90-95 ; 
criticisms of, 96-98 ; Euro- 
pean recognition, 103, 104; 
writes abridgment of, 140. 

Ford, Richard, suggests Span- 
ish History, 81: reviews 
44 Ferdinand and Isabella," 
in " Quarterly," 114. 

Frothingham, Rev. N. L., on 
W. H. P.'s eyesight, 38. 

Gardiner, Rev. Dr., W. H. 
P.'s teacher, 17. 

Gardiner, W. H., on Pres- 
cott's social manner, 174r- 
176. 

Gayangos, P., 32. 

Griswold, R. W., letters to, 
2, 19 ; sketch of W. H. P., 
36. 

Haliburton, R. G., letter 

from, 159. 
Hallam, Henry, letter from, 

105. 



238 



INDEX 



Hillard, George, 23. 
Holmes, O. W., on Prescott 

and Motley, 210. 
Humboldt, A. von, sends 

greetings to W. H. P., 113 ; 

message of approval from, 

145 ; letter from, 149, 

Irving, W., surrenders Mexi- 
can theme to W. H. P., 
133-135; estimate of P.'s 
" Conquest of Mexico," 148. 

Kohl, J. G., impression of 
Prescott, 119o 

Lieber, Francis, transmits 
praise from Humboldt, 145. 

Louisiana, W. H. P. urged to 
write history of, 82. 

Markham, Clements R., let- 
ter from, 157 : verdict on 
" Conquest of Peru," 158. 

Milman, Dean, on Prescott's 
" noble subjects," 208. 

Motley, J. L., compliment 
from, 32 ; acknowledges in- 
debtedness to W. H. P., 
209; praises "Philip II," 
210 ; letter to, 212 ; under- 
standing with Prescott, 227. 

Pepperell, first acquired by 
Prescott family, 6 ; W. H. 
P.'s life at, 176 seq. 

" Philip II," 208 ; first con- 
ception of, 216 ; question of 
foreign copyright, 220 ; pub- 
lished, 222; reception and 
sales, 223. 

Pickering, John, memoir of, 
70, 72. 

Prescott, Judge, 6-10. 

" Prescott Memorial," 2. ^ 

Prescott, William Hickling: 
genealogy, 2-7; sketch of 
his father, 8-10; his mother, 
11-14; birth, 15; boyhood 
at Salem, 16, 17; schooling 



at Boston, 17, 18; reading 
in Athenaeum, 18 ; enters 
Harvard, 19 ; record of col- 
lege reading, 20 ; graduates, 
21 ; family room at Har- 
vard, 22 ; loss of eye, 23, 
24 ; condition of eyesight, 
26-29 ; employs secretaries, 
33 ; his noctograph, 33-35 ; 
averse to dictation, 37 ; trip 
to Azores, 39; first letters 
and journals, 41 ; travels in 
England, France, and Italy, 
42 ; habits of self-inspec- 
tion, 42, 46 ; moral self-dis- 
cipline, 46, 47; plans wide 
reading, 49 ; critiques, not 
extracts, 51, 52 ; French, 
Italian, and Spanish stud- 
ies, 53, 54 ; bent toward 
history, 55 ; marriage to 
Susan Amory ^ 57 ; writes for 
1 4 North American Review, ' ' 
63, 64 ; review of Lock- 
hart's "Scott," 68; essay 
on Cervantes, 69; influ- 
enced by Gibbon's autobi- 
ography, 73; contemplates 
Roman history, 76 ; con- 
templates Italian literature, 
77 ; contemplates English 
literature, 79 ; difficulties 
and discouragements, 88 ; 
secrecy of t literary^ plans, 
100 ; scrutinizes his own 
style, 114-116; burden of 
letter-writing, 118 ; enter- 
tains foreigners, 119 ; beset 
by literary aspirants, 120- 
126; contemplates life of 
Moliere, 131 ; member of 
learned societies, 105, 150 ; 
esteemed in Spain, 148 ; un- 
spoiled by praise, 151 ; vis- 
its England, 160 ; Stirling's 
account of success in Eng- 
lish society, 168-171 ; per- 
sonal traits, 172 seq. ; life 
at Pepperell, 176 seq. ; com- 
panion of children, 179 ; 



INDEX 



239 



active philanthropy, 184 ; 
homes in Boston, 186 ; 
home at Nahant, 187 ; 
habits of exercise, 188 ; won- 
derful memory, 189 ; work- 
ing under wager, 191 ; his 
children, 194 ; religious 
views, 195 ; political sym- 
pathies, 197 ; relations with 
Sumner, 198-201 ; views 
about slavery, 201-204 ; 
writes continuation of Rob- 
ertson's " Charles V," 224; 
stroke of apoplexy, 230 ; 
death, 233. 

Scott, General, offers papers 
for history of second Mexi- 
can Conquest, 82, 83. 

Sparks, Jared, letter from, 
71. 

Stirling, Sir William : his " In 
Memoriam" in "Fraser," 
114 ; account of W. H. P.'s 
success in English society, 
168-171. 

Stuart, Professor Moses, pro- 



poses to W. H. P. an Ameri- 
can theme, 82. 
Sumner, Charles : purveyor of 
European praise, 107-109 ; 
on Prescott's boyish spirits, 
178 ; relations with Pres- 
cott, 198-201 ; letter from, 
226. 

Thackeray, W. M. : relations 
with Prescott, 1. 

Thierry, Augustin, letter to, 
28. 

Ticknor, George : Prescott 
reads his " Spanish Litera- 
ture " in MS., 217 ; letter to, 
224 ; on Prescott at the age 
of fifty-nine, 233. 

Von Raumer sends Hum- 
boldt's greeting, 113. 

Walker, President: a class- 
mate of W. H. P., 16. 

Winthrop, Robert C, reports 
W. H. P.'s fame in France, 
146 ; letter to, 204. 



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WASHINGTON IRVING. 

By Charles Dudley Warner. 

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
By Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 



MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL 

By Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 

FRANCIS PARKMAN. 

By Henry D. Sedgwick. 

EDGAR ALLAN POE. 

By George E. Woodberry. 

WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT. 

By Rollo Ogden. 

GEORGE RIPLEY. 

By O. B. Frothingham. 

WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS. 

By William P. Trent. 

BAYARD TAYLOR. 

By Albert H. Smyth. 

HENRY Do THOREAU. 

By Frank B. Sanborn. 

NOAH WEBSTER. 

By Horace E. Scudder. 

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

By George Rice Carpenter,, 

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 

By Henry A. Beers. 

Each of the above volumes ', i6mo, with portrait. 
Price, $1.25, postpaid, except the "Hawthorne" 
the "Longfellow," the " Parkman," the " Prescott," 
and the "Whittier" which are $1.10, net, postage 
10 cents. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY 

4 Park St., Boston ; 85 Fifth Ave., New York 
388 Wabash Ave., Chicago 



Comment on late afcDitions to tf)i$ 
gerte£ 

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

By George Rice Carpenter. 

It furnishes a sympathetic, orderly, and authorita- 
tive biography, gracefully written, with an excellent 
portrait. Detroit Free Press. 

The volume is a genuinely valuable contribution 
to literary history. 

The Congregationalism Boston. 

And is one of the best of an excellent series. 

Cleveland Plain Dealer. 

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 

By Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 

An example of graceful, dignified, and adequate 
biography. Chicago Post. 

Every lover of Longfellow will be grateful to Mr. 
Higginson. The Nation, New York. 

Happily couples strength with grace, and finality 
with charm. Boston Herald. 

Each, $1.10, net. Postage 10 cents. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY 

Boston and New York 



MAR 28 1904 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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